Part of a great series they've got going.
Found this nugget about Cutler very compelling:
You I think are one of six Bears who caught passes from both Rex and Jay. Obviously the Cutler era is over but I think it’s something that Bears fans still think about. How do you compare those two quarterbacks? Because on the surface in a lot of ways they’re pretty similar.
I think they’re very different, actually. I’ll start with Rex. Everybody loved Rex in the locker room. Regardless of if he had a bad game or a great game, Rex was always the same person. The guys loved him. I know personally I wanted to go out there and do everything I could to make sure he was successful. Same thing with the offensive linemen — he and Olin had a great relationship. He had physical skills, he had a good arm, he had a good mental capacity that was necessary to be a successful quarterback in the league.
And you look at Jay, and Jay had everything you want in a franchise quarterback. He had the arm, he had athleticism. And I think Jay is a lot of times misunderstood, because Jay’s personality type is a little different from Rex. Jay is more of a reserved guy. Doesn’t want to be in the media. More quiet. But Jay was competitive in his own right just as much as Rex was.
They were the complete opposite personality types. Rex had no problem getting in front of the media and saying, “I sucked today.” Whereas Jay, if he had a bad game, he knows he messed up and he wants to get better but he’d rather not talk to the media. He’d rather go home and watch film and see where he can get better. That’s how they’re different.
Was he a popular teammate?
You know what? Sometimes I loved Jay and sometimes I hated him. And that’s with a lot of guys. Some guys loved Jay and the other guys didn’t like him. But at the end of the day, I think Jay was a good guy, a good teammate, but he was a different personality than what we were used to. Coming from a guy in Rex who was loved by everybody in the locker room to having a guy like Jay who some guys had mixed feelings about — sometimes I had mixed feelings about him — but at the end of the day I think he was a good teammate. I went out there and sacrificed myself for his success as well just like any of the other guys.
So it’s just keeping the personality type that we were used to having. We were used to having Rex’s personality type. We were used to having Brian Griese’s personality type. We were used to having Kyle Orton’s personality type. And then you get a guy like Jay coming in — we weren’t used to that. I think he caught a lot of guys off guard and so a lot of guys had mixed feelings about him.
Did he get along with the leadership structure? The players? Guys like Urlacher, Tillman, Alex Brown, Wale…?
The funny thing is, it was kind of weird. The Super Bowl year to me, it seemed like, yeah, we were two teams — it was offense and defense, and defensively those guys spent the majority of their time together because they’re always at meetings together, and same thing for us offensively. But in the locker room, we came together as one.
I felt like when Jay came there and a lot of these guys left — either being traded or going to different teams — I felt like a lot of that chemistry we had left with them, so it was moreso “The Bears offense” and “The Bears defense.” It felt like we were two different teams.
As far as the leadership structure, Urlacher’s feelings toward Jay, I’m not really sure. I know there are reports that Brian hated Jay, and I’d never personally seen them argue or go at it in the locker room, or any one of those guys. I recall those guys being on the sideline cheering for us to go make a play, just like we cheer for those guys to make a turnover. As far as seeing it out in the open, I didn’t see any animosity between Urlacher and Jay, or Alex Brown or any of those guys, openly toward Jay or Jay toward those guys.
