Buyer Beware: Cutler's a Big Baby With a Big Arm

What a mess. This whole Broncos-Jay Cutler thing has devolved into one of those movies where there's no character to like, nobody for whom to root. The team and its new 32-year-old head coach obviously shoulder plenty of blame. If Josh McDaniels' first act as coach is to run a Pro Bowl quarterback out of town, he'd better turn out to be one heck of a coach. But this is a failed first test. A good coach, a true leader of men, could have found a way to pull Cutler through this and make him into a productive player for the team in spite of the rocky start.

But to lay all of the blame on the team is to let the quarterback off easy. Cutler has conducted himself like a gigantic, spoiled crybaby for the past several weeks. He deserves no sympathy, and the Bears have to be wondering what kind of man, exactly, they just added to their team.

Everybody loves Cutler's talent, sure. We've watched him throw the ball up and down the field in Denver for the past few years and seen an arm that could be one of the elite passing arms in the league for years to come. But the most minimal of history lessons (Jeff George, Ryan Leaf...) tells us that's not enough on its own. This guy is a quarterback, and that comes with responsibilities and expectations to which we now have every right to ask whether Cutler is suited.

This is not going to be the last time in his career that Cutler is affected by a trade rumor or trade discussion he doesn't like -- an off-field action by his team or coach that makes him feel unloved or unwanted. It happens to everybody. It's entirely possible it's happened to Cutler before, and that he just didn't know about it. It's 100 percent certain to happen to him again, no matter where he lands. Probably more than once. It's a fact of life for a pro athlete, and the elite ones know how to handle it. Part of the business, they say. I'll just keep doing my job and not worry about the stuff I can't control.

What Cutler should have done, of course, is tell McDaniels something along the lines of, "Okay. You wanted somebody else. That ticks me off. But you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to prove to you that you were wrong for wanting somebody else. Once you see me play for you, you're going to say to yourself, 'Man, I sure am glad we didn't do that Matt Cassel deal.' I'm going to make you forget all about Matt Cassel. Just watch."

That's what he should have done. That's the speech he would have made if this were a movie destined for a happy ending, where the coach and QB forge a mutual respect and a lifelong friendship. That's the speech he would have made if this were Friday Night Lights.

Which means it's probably too much to expect exactly that from a 25-year-old quarterback who, until this latest incident, has probably never been told anything about himself to indicate that the sun doesn't shine out of his you-know-where.

But Cutler could have at least taken a step in that direction. Could have at least taken out a map and tried to find the high road, just to see if it might be the way to go. He didn't even come close. He hung out on the exact opposite end of the behavior spectrum, stomping around like a spoiled toddler who's been asked to try broccoli, refusing to take phone calls from his bosses.

Last night, he comes out and starts saying he doesn't want to be traded and doesn't understand how the Broncos got to this point so quickly. Please. That's something he could have said last week, before the team announced that it had grown frustrated by the unreturned phone calls and was going to deal him. Saying it now makes it look like ... well, like it's not true.

This is the behavior of a spoiled, self-absorbed athlete, and the Bears should be asking themselves whether that's what they want in a quarterback. This is a quarterback, remember -- not a moody wide receiver or defensive back who factors into a few plays per game and whose temperament can be seen as a quirky distraction. The quarterback is the most important player on the field -- in many ways the most important figure in the entire organization. If your quarterback is a head case, you take on more problems than you can fix. Losing. Public embarrassment. A constant stream of brushfires for your coaching staff to put out. A head-case QB infects everything, and teams have a very hard time recovering from the damage he can do.

Yes, the coach blew this. Yes, it could have been handled better on the team's end. Yes, the owner, who let go of a two-time Super Bowl winning coach and replaced him with a rookie, could have stepped in and made the effort to make peace.

And yes, the kid is only 25 and still has time to grow up, mature and learn from this.

But now that he's gotten his wish and is about to be hailed as a savior in Chicago, what are the chances of those things actually happening?

At some point during his time in Chicago, Jay Cutler is going to face adversity again. On the field. Off the field. Both. And based on the way Cutler has conducted himself over the past few weeks, his new team has every reason to wonder whether he'll be able to handle it.