Baffoe: You Can Cry About Jay Cutler Or Choose To Laugh With Me
By Tim Baffoe-
(CBS) "I urge you to please notice when you are happy," wrote Kurt Vonnegut, "and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
I am happy. This is nice. And oddly enough it's because of Jay Cutler.
Following the news that Cutler will be the Chicago Bears' starting quarterback in 2015, Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote:
"There's no doubt that Cutler's play can make your head hurt. But I would argue that he's actually good for the city's mental health. By allowing us to scream and yell and curse his very existence, he actually makes us feel better about ourselves. That's correct: Jay the Therapy Dog."
This is true, at least for those who feed off of their own negative energy. And save for violence toward others, that's OK.
Get it out. Let poor quarterbacking cleanse your body, mind and soul. Scream and yell at the TV until hoarse. Boo through your double-digit-dollar beer at Soldier Field. It's way better than taking it out on the family dog or bottling it up inside until one day you snap inexplicably in line at the bank on the person in front of you who is wearing a Devin Aromashodu shirsey.
But Morrissey fails to take it one step further in not considering the Tim Baffoes of the Bears-o-sphere. They who need Cutler for a different cathartic experience.
To giggle at you who get angry at him. To snicker at the whole dumb situation. Lord, do I love it.
Perhaps the only non-football thing associated with Cutler more beaten like a dead horse than Photoshopping him with cigarettes in his mouth (because, hey, jokes from 2012!) is the complaining about him as Chicago Bears quarterback. It passed the point of absurd a while ago and has now become an exercise in futility in exorcising futility. Bark at that moon while Cutler and I moon you.
He's not a great quarterback. He won't lead the Bears to a Super Bowl. We all get it. Repeating it week after week does nothing anymore. But he's also not the reason the Bears sucked last season, as easy of a scapegoat as he can be. And he's the biggest tool right now on retool-in-process team.
But be angry now. Whine. Kvetch.
Please don't be offended, though, if some of us point and laugh from the back of the classroom. Those of us who rationalize that the presence of Cutler — while admittedly not ideal — is the fault of ourselves, not our stars.
His acquisition via trade was lauded by every Bears fan, even those who lie about it now. This wasn't the Trent Richardson trade. This wasn't drafting Cedric Benson in the Aaron Rodgers draft class. It was one of the few sound decisions of the Jerry Angelo era, and we applauded it. Cutler's contract extension was asinine, but here we are unable to change anything about it.
New general manager Ryan Pace literally said "Jay's our quarterback" the other day. My sadistic smile couldn't have been wider at the phrase that sends 670 The Score callers into a Pavlovian tizzy. This came as new coach John Fox spoke for me in begrudgingly saying in not so many words that the Bears would just have to deal with Cutler being here. Oh, that press conference was so great.
But see, none of it matters because the Chicago Bears in 2015 don't matter. "So it goes," to quote the Kurt Vonnegut-ism. Cutler is probably gone after 2015. The free-agent quarterbacks in 2016 as of now include Ryan Tannehill, Robert Griffin III and not-a-chance-in-hell Andrew Luck. The quarterback crop in next year's draft will be better than this year's because almost any future year would have to be. Options will be had.
The Bears are amid a rebuilding process, with household names like Lance Briggs and Charles Tillman not returning and perhaps the farewell tour of the heavily used Matt Forte a year from now. Brandon Marshall gets to be in New York on an iffy team with a less-than-stellar quarterback, which should keep him cool and collected until about Week 5. (This is nice. I am happy.)
The new regime of Pace and Fox head into their first draft together trying to figure out what holes to best plug now while understanding it will take more than one draft and offseason to fix the myriad problems with this team. One of those holes not as gaping as others is at quarterback.
There were no realistic trade partners for Cutler, no matter if Pace is truthful or not in saying the Bears were never shopping him. Cutler's spilt milk for one more year. It will be a year with — brace yourselves — a new offensive coordinator who's supposedly actually excited to work with him.
But groan and whine that Cutler isn't the best lipstick for the 2015 pig of a team you have on your hands. And then I'm going to deal with the groaning and whining. I've chosen not to find it insufferable anymore; instead, your trash is my delicious schadenfreude in an otherwise uninspiring Bears season upcoming.
I simply grew exhausted of the Cutler thing last season. Vonnegut also once wrote, "Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward — and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner."
So if you don't mind, I'm going to laugh while you cry. Just please clean up afterward when the Bears have moved on to better days and before you join me in looking back on all this and giggling.
Follow Tim Baffoe on Twitter @TimBaffoe.
