Hate to say I told you so...

I've never been a fan of Jay Cutler. Let me say that straight out. Sure, it's easy to say that now that he's whining at T.O.-type levels, but really, I've never liked him. He's too much of a diva on and off the field. If I remember correctly, he had his little fight or tantrum with Philip Rivers because Rivers "rubbed him the wrong way." That very well might be a direct quote. Leave the prima donna crap in high school Jay, this is the big leagues. On the other hand, since I can remember, I've respected the Broncos organization, especially since often you can tell a team by its coach (obviously here I'm talking about Mike Shanahan). As much as Cutler is acting like a 233 pound toddler and coach Josh McDaniels has shown the coaching experience of a toddler with way less passing yards, would it be too rash to suggest the Broncos front office is the one at fault here? It's not even a long, twisting series of mistakes, it really comes down to just a handful.

Fundamental Mistake #1: Mike Shanahan gets canned

This was one of those moments at the end of last season when I started figuring out the world is going down the tubes. Screw the economy, Mike Shanahan losing his job scared me so bad I hid in my closet for three days. Shanahan's not a guy who leaves an organization because he gets fired. As far as I'm concerned, he's in that class of coaches who leaves when he wants to leave. Can you really blame the Broncos bad 2nd half of the season on him, when all 50 of their available halfbacks got injured and they were basically recruiting the oversized kids at the Denver YMCA, and your star QB has ONE legitimately pro-bowl caliber game in the last six weeks of the season? (And don't forget the showdown the last game against the Chargers when it was do-or-die for Lady Cutler, who choked and the Broncos proceeded to get routed 52-21). Anyway, that's a lot of ranting for saying firing Shanahan was a dumb move.

Fundamental Mistake #2: Hire that McDaniels guy

This is obviously connected to Fundamental Mistake #1, because you can't make this mistake without making the first. Josh who?? I don't care who he was the assistant waterboy-towel-cleaning coach for, this guy has ZERO head coaching experience, and somehow somebody expects him to treat situations like this professionally? Even if he was the QB coach in New England, the most potentially damaging thing he had to worry about was Tom Brady getting ambushed by paparazzi when he was out with his even more famous squeeze. Tom Brady might be more famous than Jay Cutler, but Brady's all man, and the same goes for Matt Cassel. If the Broncos expected the transition to go smoothly, they obviously were more than ready to make this mistake.

Fundamental Mistake #3: Keep Jay Cutler

This one might be the most surprising, but you heard me right. Given mistakes #1 and #2, keeping Jay Cutler is a mistake for two main reasons. The first has to do with McDaniels' lack of experience as a coach. If you are at the helm of a new team all of a sudden, obviously changes have to be made. If McDaniels was actually considering trading for Matt Cassel (like Cutler says he was) he should've manned up and done so instead of whispering it around and letting it spread as a rumor instead of as an official statement after having gone through the proper channels, i.e. talking to management, talking to Cutler, talking to the Patriots, traded for Cassel, and THEN let the media and anybody else outside of those people I just mentioned know about it. Anything else sounds like a teenage girl gossiping about what boy she likes and telling half the class instead of telling the boy himself. Second, I'd rather have Cassel on my team than Cutler, plain and simple. Sure, Cutler passed for a gazillion yards last season, but he also was NOT dependable when he needed to be, while Cassel started his first game since elementary school or something (you know the story, look it up) and would've gotten the Pats to the playoffs if it hadn't been for those meddling Dolphins. Plain and simple: Cassel won more games than Cutler while getting paid less and making less annoying whining and crying baby noises, if any at all. And after all of this mess, now the Broncos have missed out on Cassel and will have to deal with Cutler somehow more professionally than they have been since McDaniels was hired. Good luck.

-J

Lakers "defense"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUENlW0s0Ow

Is it me, or are the Lakers consistently responsible for the next suspension-worthy flagrant 90 foul in the NBA? If you haven't seen the video, watch it here. Notice that it's the end of the 3rd quarter (still lots of basketball to play), and the Lakers are getting blown out 83-55, and Rudy Fernandez goes off on a breakaway that you just have to live with if you're playing defense, the only guy with the skills to cleanly block that shot was Kobe Bryant and he was clear on the other side of the court, and Trevor Ariza swats at Fernandez like he's a little Spanish mosquito that just sucked the blood out of you, your family and possibly your dog.

I wonder if Ariza is just "young and inexperienced" and isn't smart enough to just challenge Fernandez without assassinating him or if it's a tactic coming from Guru Jackson. Either way, this is probably the closest Fernandez has been to death since he ran with the bulls in Pamplona (though I'm still checking up on whether he was even there either), and it was a sissy swat by a player with the defensive skills of the Detroit Lions (that's right, I said it).

Here's my favorite part. Obviously, this is a Flagrant 2 foul and Ariza deserves a suspension (which he didn't get, Lamar Odom did instead for leaving the bench). Still, fast forward to about the 2:35 mark on the video when the crowd finds out it's a flagrant 2 foul, and check out the one Lakers fan in the Kobe jersey standing there and obviously saying the call is garbage (though we all know that isn't the word he used). Is he serious?? Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Obviously that kid is from some third-world place where basketball is played in nuclear sludge and "defense" is another word for clotheslining a player on his way to the basket and he's at the game because he won a contest sponsored by the NBA or UNICEF or the Ronald McDonald House allowing him to watch his favorite player live from the second row. That or (and here's what I really think) this guy's a moron, along with the rest of the Lakers fans who flagrant foul after flagrant foul can't believe how badly the league picks on their poor defensless players who really have nothing resembling defense in their basketball repertoire.

Bottom line: Ariza should be suspended. Not that it would hurt the Lakers that bad, but it's the fair thing to do. And that fan too. Suspend him too. Indefinitely. Or put him in basketball camp against Ariza during his suspension.

-J