Cutler prognosis leaves reason for hope
Injured quarterback Jay Cutler will be back before the end of the regular season, and until then the Bears will rally behind backup Caleb Hanie, according to coach Lovie Smith.
Cutler is expected to have surgery Tuesday to repair the fractured right thumb he suffered near the end of Sunday's 31-20 victory over San Diego.
Smith did not offer a specific timetable for Cutler's return, but Cutler is expected to have a pin inserted into the thumb to expedite healing and provide stability.
Smith said the Bears' medical staff has told him Cutler could play by the regular-season finale at Minnesota on New Year's Day.
“Somewhere late in the (season),” Smith said. “I hate giving specifics. This is what I wanted to know: ‘Was it a season-ending injury?' No. From what I've been told right now, we can expect him back at the end of the regular season.”
Hanie, who has never started an NFL game, will replace Cutler, as he did in the NFC championship game loss to Green Bay last season.
“Don't feel sorry for us or anything like that,” Smith said. “We have a lot of things in place. We're going to miss a great player for a period of time.
“But offensively we're going to rely on our running game a little bit more, and right now we've been relying on it quite a bit. We have a great defense, and (great) special teams. You know how we win football games around here, so that will be the case.”
Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher said players have faith in Hanie but that the defense would have to play better to compensate for Cutler's absence.
“Caleb will be fine,” Urlacher said. “To me, we have to play better on defense now, that's all it says to me. Nothing against Caleb, but we have to step up on defense and play better.
“Caleb did a good job for us last year in the playoff game. He'll do a good job, and we just have to play better on defense, that's all there is to it.”
The defense wasn't very impressive for most of Sunday's game, until it grabbed a pair of fourth-quarter interceptions to seal the deal.
“Defensively, we didn't play as well as we need to, as well as we have,” Smith said. “But when we needed to take the ball away, those were really big and the guys finished it off.”
Despite suffering the injury with just less than 10 minutes left in the game while trying to make a tackle after an interception, Cutler finished the game.
He completed his only 2 passes after the injury but did not mention it to teammates. Urlacher said he found out in the locker room after the game.
“It was devastating, it was horrible, and I felt worse for him than I did for us,” Urlacher said. “It stinks for us because he's having such a great year. He's our leader; he's a guy we turn to for pretty much everything.
“So it's bad for us as a team, but it's worse for him as an individual. He's having a great year. It stinks. He's pretty upset about it, I'm sure, and it's not going to be a fun process for him.”
Hanie has not played a down this season. The last snap he took was in the NFC title game last season, when he completed 13 of 20 passes and led the Bears to 2 touchdowns, throwing 1 TD pass but getting intercepted twice.
He entered with the Bears trailing 14-0 after Cutler suffered a sprained knee and twice helped rally them to within 7 points.
The only other quarterback on the roster is rookie Nathan Enderle, a fifth-round pick out of Idaho who has not taken an NFL snap.
Cutler's 13-7 touchdown-to-interception ratio is the best of his six-year NFL career, and his passer rating has improved to 85.7 after a slow start. He has thrown just 3 interceptions in the past six games, along with 8 TD passes.
But that's not all the Bears will miss without Cutler on the field.
“People underestimate how big of a leader he is on this team,” Urlacher said. “He doesn't get enough credit for it. I see in the paper all the time about he's not this … he's everything people think he's not. He's a great teammate.
“He does a good job and he says all the right things at the right time. He gets on guys when he needs to, not just offense but team wise. He'll say things when he needs to, so it's going to be hard to replace that.
“You've got to have (several) guys try to step up and fill in for him, but he's going to be missed. I don't know what the situation is, how long he's out, whatever, I'm not going to speculate or anything like that, but we're going to miss him however long he's out.”
Hanie lacks Cutler's rocket arm and experience, but he is just as mobile and more inclined to make plays with his legs, although the Bears aren't expected to deviate much from their normal offense.
“We know who Caleb Hanie is,” Smith said. “We've played Caleb around here. We know what he can do. But it's not like we're going to start running a different offense with Caleb.
“We're going to run our offense with Caleb at the helm, and we're going to win football games that way.”
Hanie played in two regular-season games last season and in 2009, completing 8 of 14 passes for 66 yards with 1 interception and a passer rating of 39.6.
The Bears plan to bring in a veteran to back up Hanie but, as Smith admitted, there's not much out there.
“There's not that many floating around,” Smith said, “but there are some. These are the cards we've been dealt. We'll be able to get someone in.”
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