Imrem: Cutler just might be Chicago Bears QB forever
Jay Cutler is back again … back with the Chicago Bears … back in another training camp as of Wednesday.
The Bears quarterback is like a stranger who shows up at a family picnic every summer even if it's not his family.
Maybe Lovie Smith taught Cutler how to survive at the annual picnic that is the NFL.
Didn't it seem like the former Bears head coach would say every July, "Hi, everyone, I'm your Uncle Lovie"? And the family decided it would be harder to shoo him away than to make him an honorary relative.
Remarkable, Jay Cutler is beginning his eighth season with the Bears.
All-pro quarterbacks might last that long with one team even if they don't win a Super Bowl, but nobody has mistaken Cutler for an all-pro quarterback.
It wouldn't be surprising if Cutler is still the Bears quarterback when either Ivanka Trump or Chelsea Clinton is sworn in as president of the United States.
After Cutler was here a few years, critics figured he'd be gone sooner than later.
Now in the middle of a long-term contract, the least-stressful strategy is to simply be resigned to the inevitability that Cutler will be with the Bears for the duration.
What duration? As long as his restless, reality-TV-star wife will let him stay in Chicago. Longer than most of us will live. Longer than one of his overthrown passes.
In the meantime, ladies and gentleman, give a big round of applause for your Chicago Bears starting quarterback … Jay-y-y-y … CUT-ler!"
Get used to it because Cutler is even past the largest salary-cap-hit years of his contract, making him eminently affordable.
The Bears could do worse than Cutler. Anyone who has been around here for a while knows they have.
Cutler is somewhere in the middle third of NFL quarterbacks, still not worth the money he's being paid but worth more at the moment than whomever the Bears could get to replace him.
The Bear QB's presence is taken so much for granted now by the media, they went awhile into the head coach John Fox/general manager Ryan Pace news session Wednesday before bringing up Cutler's name.
Then neither the question nor the answer was scintillating, Fox saying, "At the conclusion of the whole (2015) season working with Jay, I was very impressed."
As Fox enters his second season with the Bears, much is made of the improvement his teams made from Y1 to Y2 in both Carolina and Denver.
But Fox himself noted that he added quarterbacks Jake Delhomme with the Panthers and Peyton Manning with the Broncos.
In Fox's first year here, Jay Cutler was his quarterback; in his second year, Jay Cutler is his quarterback.
Despite all the Bears' changes - new arrivals on defense, the departure of Matt Forte on offense, maybe even fresh neckties on the McCaskeys - the quarterback is a fixture.
Heck, after this week's baseball controversies surrounding Chris Sale and Aroldis Chapman, the tenured Cutler seems like the adult in the romper room that is Chicago sports.
Football is all about the quarterback and if you have a great one, you keep him.
Or if you're the Bears and you have Jay Cutler, you keep him anyway.
Expect him back for many more annual football picnics, whether you consider him a part of the family or not.
mimrem@dailyherald.com