Redskins, Economics, and Jay Cutler's Thumb

• No matter your opinion on Tim Tebow, let’s just all take a moment to be thankful that Denver managed to pull out a huge upset against the New York Jets. That ought to shut the Jets up. Well, at least for a day or two.

Close your mouth, Rex.

That's better.

• Never, ever pick the Giants over the Eagles, apparently.

• The No Fun League has informed Bears’ receiver Earl Bennett that he will get kicked out of the game if he continues to wear his awesome orange shoes. Whew, thank goodness the league is finally cracking down on those dangerous uniform violations.

C'mon, how often does a Chicago Bear get to look cool?

• Poor little John Skelton’s line: 6/19, 99 yards, 0 TDs, 3 INTs. And then he was replaced by someone named Richard Bartel.

• Let’s get to know some of this year’s Washington Redskins:

• A wide receiver who tells an opposing team’s fan to kill himself.
• Cornerback DeAngelo Hall, who finally says something sensible.   
• A long-snapper who tests out tasers on himself for fun. 
• And a coach who seems to be the only person who can save the Cowboys from Tony Romo. (Actual quote from Tony Romo: “I guess you get two timeouts in overtime, not three.”)

"What?! We only get four downs?! Since when!?"

 

• Lions’ receiver Tony Scheffler wins my best touchdown celebration of the week award. Though, I have to say, I thought it was a lot cooler when I thought he was doing a West Side Story dance rather than imitating a cell phone commercial. 

   

• We all knew the Buffalo Bills weren’t going to win the Super Bowl this year, but they did look pretty good the first seven games of the season, averaging just over 30 points a game. The last three games, however, they’ve averaged 8.7 points. The defense was pretty solid in the first seven games as well, holding opponents to 21 points, compared to the 35 points they’ve given up on average over the last three games. What happened? Did Harvard economics major Ryan Fitzpatrick draw up some charts and graphs and realize that he still has a $59 million contract whether he wins or loses?

"...carry the 1, divide by number of wins - yep, still $59 million."

• So, Jay Cutler. Broke his thumb. Needs surgery. And I don’t really care what Lovie Smith says, I have a hard time believing Jay will be back on the field before the end of the regular season. Cutler broke his thumb trying to run down San Diego Charger Antoine Cason after he intercepted Cutler. Now, I really, really hate to keep on defending Jay, but I have to say, despite the outcome, I’d still rather have a quarterback who tried to stop an opponent from scoring after an interception than a a quarterback who watched as a defender walked into the endzone with his football (ahem, Tom Brady!).

• Cutler’s injury is interesting in a couple of ways. The timing is rough, as Cutler was in the midst of the best stretch of his career, and the Bears are gunning for a wild-card spot.  It’s also interesting because there are few teams in the league whose success is less dependent on the quarterback than Chicago. Chicago wins on defense, Devin Hester, and Matt Forte. (Remember, the Bears accidentally got into the Super Bowl five years ago with Rex Grossman as quarterback. Rex Grossman!)  And though Caleb Hanie hasn’t played much, he’s been pretty decent when he gets an opportunity, like last season’s NFC Championship game.

• So how much does Cutler’s injury affect the Bears’ playoff hopes? The Packers in week 16 are really the only challenge they face on the rest of the schedule, so I expect the Bears to still be in the hunt late in the season.

The truth is with Cutler out, we are all losers. No more of this:

Or this:

 

Or even this:

But we will probably get to see a lot of this: