No one is celebrated for apathy like Jay Cutler
Jay Cutler’s playing career never quite reached the prodigious heights his ego seemed to suggest it would when he arrived in the NFL in 2006 as a first-round pick of the Broncos, but few have gotten more mileage out of a blasé attitude that flouts any expectation of passion from a professional athlete.
By now, anyone casually familiar with pro football knows of Cutler’s deeply sardonic public persona, best exemplified to the average fan by the Smokin’ Jay Cutler meme that was popular a few years ago and gets invoked each time the quarterback acts snide or disinterested.
The latest example of Cutler charming fans by being resolutely above it all came Sunday during the premiere episode of "Very Cavallari," the latest reality show starring his wife, Kristin Cavallari. In it, Jay is asked by Kristin what plans he has for the next phase of his life, to which he replies, “I’m not really looking to do a lot of work right now. I’m looking to do the opposite of that.”
Cutler, of course, was at this point last year said to be done with football and headed to the broadcast booth for Fox Sports as a new color analyst on NFL coverage. Whereas all the casual observers assumed last spring it would be Tony Romo who would quickly ditch his broadcasting gig for a return to the field, it was Cutler who was slated to suit up before calling his first game.
When Ryan Tannehill went down with a season-ending injury at the outset of training camp in 2017, Cutler swooped in almost out of nowhere and with no preparation to the tune of a one-year, $10 million deal. The Dolphins made the playoffs the previous season for the first time in eight years. With a perfectly pedestrian showing by Cutler under center, the Dolphins were once again a middling team, going 6-8 in the games he started and missing the playoffs.
Easily the most memorable moment of the Cutler Miami year was on a wildcat play where he lined up at receiver and not only refused to move, but didn’t even take his hands off his hips. Granted, most quarterbacks would not engage with a defender on that type of play, and yet somehow Cutler will forever be an innovator in the field of appearing to care the least.
Cutler is still not officially retired, but that’s likely because he knows he can do just about nothing during the offseason, and if an opportune injury occurs, he would be back in the race for a starting job in a matter of weeks. In the teasers for the reality show, he neglects to commit on whether he’s “100 percent retired,” saying he won’t know for sure until it’s clear whether or not he’s on a roster in September.
In some ways it’s relatable, albeit in an aspirational sense. Most of us would like to be able to coast through life, barely bothering to try at even the most trivial of social interactions, and be celebrated for it, to say nothing of monetarily successful beyond the average person’s wildest dreams, which is what Jay is. Cutler is obviously more talented at football than your average person is at whatever he or she is good at. Professional athletes are vetted in terms of skill the way few are in any field.
But it’s still not a meritocracy. For example, there are plenty of social forces that give white athletes from financially secure backgrounds an advantage at developing into a quarterback. What’s more, Cutler’s lack of concern about job preparation puts him at a sharp contrast to Colin Kaepernick, who is still working hard to keep himself in playing shape despite being blackballed by the NFL for over a year now.
Cutler’s antics are amusing, sufficiently that sports fans who have little interest in Kristin’s celebrity will tune in just to see her husband act dismissive and low-energy. But a little of the luster is gone when a quarterback whose resume easily outshines Cutler’s can’t get a sniff from an NFL team while Jay can just lay back, yuck it up, and just maybe get another decent payday.
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