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Imrem: Kromer latest victim of Cutler's wreckage

Jay Cutler is like a combination of the worst and luckiest NASCAR driver ever.

He tools recklessly around the track, causes all sorts of massive collisions and never incurs even the smallest of fender benders himself.

Other drivers go up in smoke. Some of them suffer third-degree burns. All of them want to punch him out in the garage area.

Yet Cutler keeps on keeping on toward his next huge payday.

Funny thing is that Cutler isn't a race-car driver. He's an NFL quarterback laying waste to everything in his rearview mirror.

Cutler's latest victim is Aaron Kromer, the Bears' offensive coordinator/line coach.

A Chicago newspaper revealed that Kromer was the source of an NFL Network report criticizing Cutler and saying that the Bears feel "buyer's remorse" over the quarterback's contract.

Kromer tearfully apologized to Bears' players for leaking company business, though he denied the "buyer's remorse" part of the NFL Network report, sources told the Chicago Tribune.

Look, Kromer was wrong for violating a trust. Nobody inside a team should air grievances about someone else inside the team to someone outside the team.

Kromer should be fired for this sports sin … making him just another football man brought down in some way or other by Cutler.

The quarterback reportedly shook his head during Kromer's admission, making himself out to be a sympathetic figure. So there he goes again, taking a few more laps around the track while someone else goes up in flames and down in tears.

Cutler brings grown professionals to their knees. He rips them into shreds. He piles their careers in a heap.

It's difficult to tell whether Cutler is a symptom of the Bears' disease, the disease itself or both if that's possible. The franchise is either dumb from ownership down to him or from him up to ownership, but it's dumb one way or the other.

Kromer, who must have known better, apparently couldn't help himself from telling truths about Cutler to a national reporter.

Bears' head coach Marc Trestman can't stop himself, either, from defending Cutler against the critics in the stands and in the press box.

Nor could Bears general manager Phil Emery stop himself from giving Cutler a guaranteed $54 million over three years beginning this season.

If Kromer indeed will be fired, then Trestman should be too and Emery should be too and club president Ted Phillips should be too and all the McCaskeys owners should fire themselves too.

Maybe not entirely because of Cutler but surely due in great part to the nonsense they have perpetrated because of him. He has either turned them into buffoonish football people or exposed them as buffoonish football people.

Jerry Angelo, the Bears' previous general manager, gambled by acquiring Cutler and lost his job after the quarterback evolved into much less than expected. Lovie Smith, the previous head coach, lost his job because none of the assistants he hired could produce a productive offense with this particular quarterback.

Meanwhile, of course, Cutler keeps shaking his head like people are running him off the track when in fact he's running them out of town.

Cutler continues to cash big-time checks as if he's continuing to be the big-time quarterback he never has been.

Maybe this time Cutler finally did something good for the Bears: Maybe he made Kromer get goofy enough to make the Bears look laughable enough that ownership won't be able to deny the dysfunction.

But let's say the McCaskeys do what they should do and relieve Kromer, Emery, Trestman, Phillips and themselves of their duties.

A good guess is that Jay will still be Jay, taking Sunday drives around the NFL and sending more GMs, coaches and coordinators to the junkyard.

mimrem@dailyherald.com

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