A word to Jay Cutler's NFL colleagues who felt behooved to call upon their years of medical training and experience to pass social media judgement on his injury: Blow it out your rectal orifice. I don't particularly care for Cutler, but he's the best qb they've had since...Harbaugh? Vince Evans? Erik Kramer? Bobby Douglass? Sid Luckman? (O.K., its not exactly a distinguished list.) An immobile Jay Cutler was not going to bring home the Halas trophy. Unfortunately for the Bears, neither was Todd Collins at any level of mobility.
Another point in this rather improbable defense of Jay Cutler is the Bears relative lack of receiving options. It is a testament to the Bears as a team that they advanced to the NFC Championship Game with the likes of Earl Bennett, Johnny Knox and Devin Hester at wide receiver. Greg Olsen is a capable TE, but it's not rocket science to toss some double coverage his way and challenge the other guys to beat you.
I was puzzled by the Bears not using Hester more on WR screens, bubble screens or out of the backfield. He's a devastating "in space" runner, but Mr. Martz seemed to content to leave that club in the bag. It's not like the Packer's LB's and DB's outside Sam Shields are heralded as speed burners.
As for the contest, the Packers D made up for a subpar Aaron Rodgers performance and James Starks provided effective run support. Troubling signs for the Packers were the Charles Woodson/Nick Collins "After you," "No, after you," "No, after you, I insist" tackling routine on Earl Bennett's touchdown catch late in game, and a stunningly effective hurry-up offense orchestrated by Caleb Hanie. (The Bears' 3rd string quarterback, a.k.a the second coming of Peter Tom Willis.)
The Packers are peaking at the perfect time with some improbable players. Sam Shields, who I predicted on this very blog would not make the opening day roster and possibly get cut at halftime of a preseason game, is now arguably the heir apparent to Charles Woodson. Woodson is gradually doing the Rod Woodson career-twilight position shuffle with alarming effectiveness - in fact, a new position name is needed to account for his whereabouts in the nickel and dime packages. Current favorites are "Delta-back" and "Omega-back", using the actual greek letters in text media. Howard "All You Can Eat" Green dined his way out of New York and into the Packers defensive line rotation, and Erik Walden continues to make play after play after being very unemployed just month or so ago.
A key to watch in the Super Bowl will be the play of AJ Hawk. If Hawk is making plays ahead of his position (as opposed to dragging Rashard Mendenhall down from behind) this indicates the other members of the front seven are doing their job. Hawk is a good-but-not-great linebacker who can be very effective when he doesn't have to create for himself. If the D-line can create some disruption up front, Hawk is in a position to make plays. The rest is up to him.
Another matchup to watch is BJ "The Freezer" Raji and the Pittsburgh interior lineman. With All-Pro C Maurkice Pouncey questionable for the game, the burden falls on Raji and his crew to get push up front. An All-Pro center also can make the adjacent guards look very good - it will be interesting to see how Ramon Foster and Chris Kemoeatu perform if Pouncey can't go.
Other bold predictions for the Super Bowl: The Packers will have a pivotal positive special teams play, John Kuhn will get stoned on a 4th and short, and Jerry Jones will try and fail to seem happy to be there. The over/under for cheesehead shots is 14, and the late Myron Cope will get mentioned at least twice.
Be sure to weigh on the new position name for Charles Woodson - Deltaback or Omegaback (Animal House similarity purely coincidental).
Go Packers!
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