Reed's Misses Save Hide of Cutler, Bears

CHICAGO -- Words aren't necessary. The images alone Sunday are sufficient portraits of why football might be the ultimate gratification mind game. There was Jay Cutler, managing a rare laugh as an official accidentally knocked his helmet off his head, punching the air in victory after a hellish week in which he threw four interceptions and was crucified again by the NFL coaching establishment. There was Robbie Gould, as in gold, calmly making yet another game-winning field goal in a volatile meteorological swirl on a cow-pasture surface pockmarked by two U2 concerts.

And there, on the Pittsburgh sideline, was Jeff Reed, literally looking ready to cry. Few professions in sports, or life, are more thankless than that of the placekicker. When you convert a kick, it's taken for granted. When you miss a potential winner, you're a bum. Reed, whose 82.8 percent conversion rate makes him the league's 10th-most accurate kicker ever, missed two such biggies on the oversized Brillo pad that is Soldier Field. And with those blunders came the first loss of the season for the Steelers, your defending Super Bowl champions, who might have begun to make their case for repeating if even one of Reed's kicks hadn't swerved wide left.

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This could have been a day when the Chicago Bears started 0-2, when the acquisition of Cutler became moot in the face of a grim reality: Of the last 160 NFL teams to go winless over the first two weekends, only 22 rebounded to reach the playoffs. But Reed's misfires, juxtaposed against Cutler's cool perseverance and the money leg of Gould, saved the Bears from misery while reminding us that only one franchise, the New England Patriots, has won back-to-back Super Bowls this decade. The NFL has too much parity and anything-goes intrigue -- mind telling me how Cincinnati won in Green Bay? -- to be surprised that the Steelers and Bears are 1-1 after a thrilling matchup of American football hotbeds.

Afterward, Reed remained silent for several minutes while dressing at his locker. He took his time putting on his clothes and adorning his body with accessories, including an earring and a neck chain with a bullet. Off the field, Reed is a piece of work, proudly displaying part of his genitalia in a widely-distributed Internet photo and pictured at a bar with a young lady and a wild, Mohawk-looking hairdo. But never was he more naked to the world than on the night he couldn't make kicks when Gould, his counterpart, made his, a 44-yarder with 15 seconds left that gave the Bears a 17-14 comeback victory.

"I have no excuses,'' said Reed, facing the media like a man. "I'd like to congratulate Robbie on making the game-winner. I've been in those shoes before, and I know how great he feels right now, as opposed to how I feel. I missed two kicks, and, basically, I was trying too hard on both of them. That's what you do as a right-footed kicker; you hook them. I'm just embarrassed, you know, because these guys fought their tails off to win a game. If there is one player that can singlehandedly lose the game, I'll take the blame for it. I know they have confidence in me. It hurts me because I let them down. I was warming up, kicking the ball into the kicking net, waiting for my opportunity to shine, and I let them down twice.

"It hurts. Give credit to Chicago, a good team. But if I make either of those kicks, we win the game."

Said Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, as stunned as anyone: "Of course that's uncharacteristic of him. He just kicked the game-winner last week (against Tennessee) in overtime. That's kind of what we are used to. We are not used to what happened today."

Reed's second failure, a 43-yarder, gave Cutler enough room to pull off his first fourth-quarter rally as Chicago's first franchise quarterback Sid Luckman -- assuming franchise quarterbacks existed in the leather-helmet era. If the city. A lightning rod for criticism, particularly from coaches who don't like his cocky attitude and the way he orchestrated his stormy departure Denver, Cutler was drilled by former NFL coaches Jim Mora and Mike Martz after what they deemed a rude performance at the press conference after the Bears' Week 1 loss at Green Bay.

"When I saw that postgame press conference, I thought he looked completely immature," Mora said on NFL Network. "He acted like he didn't even care."

"He just doesn't get it," Martz said. "He doesn't understand that he represents a great head coach and the rest of those players on that team. Somebody needs to talk to him."

This came after the Yoda-like Tony Dungy, who criticizes people about as often as he drops an f-bomb, condemned Cutler for not being more mature and a better leader. What's telling about Dungy and Martz is that both were mentors for Bears coach Lovie Smith at earlier stops. Was Cutler, still an inmate in the asylum, already wearing on coaches and teammates with his brashness? Or was it simply a case of people tolerating and even celebrating him when he wins and trashing him when he loses? Wisely, Cutler did his talking against one of the league's premier defenses, shaking off punishing abuse from James Harrison and the gang by finishing 27 of 38 for 236 yards for two touchdowns -- and no interceptions. He did this without a high-profile playmaker on offense, though he does have the developing Johnny Knox as a speedburner and his good friend, tight end Greg Olsen, as a receiver. Had the Bears lost, some writers were ready to set an over-under date on when Cutler would publicly criticize Bears management for not finding him a playmaker or two or three.

But they didn't lose, mainly because Cutler wouldn't let his mates consider the thought. During the final drive after Reed's miss, he went 4 of 4 with a yards-per-attempt average of 13.8 yards. In the fourth quarter, he was 9 of 10 for 92 yards. The City of Weak Shoulders, as I've always called Chicago, wasn't prepared for such late heroics from a quarterback. Maybe these people should realize what they have, sit back and enjoy it.


"I think that all of us have to get used to playing with Jay and the level he is going to play at," center Olin Kreutz said. "When we get used to that level, we'll be all right. He came through for us in the end. We believe in Jay. We know what Jay's capable of. All those interceptions (against Green Bay) weren't his fault. But he wasn't going to point that out. And we're not going to point fingers at everybody. We all know what kind of player Jay is and we stand firmly in his corner."

Cutler refused to let himself be bothered by the Mora/Martz knocks, just as he didn't listen to criticism after the Broncos ceded to his wish and traded him to the Bears. He's a carefree guy who, if you've seen Jerry Maguire, is the real-life answer to Kush. He was asked why there was such a difference between Week 1 and
Week 2.

"Didn't throw four picks," Cutler cracked. "I think they brought me here for a reason. I want the ball at the end of every game with a chance to win it. I always hope to get a chance. I always think we're going to get a chance if it's 3 minutes or 30 seconds. All we want is a shot."

As for reports that he screamed at receivers in Green Bay for being at fault on two of the interceptions, he said life is beautiful. "Guys are going to drop balls. We don't have time to dwell on it. I'm going to throw interceptions. we have to move on." Impressively, Cutler didn't hesitate to go right back to tight end Kellen Davis for a 6-yard touchdown pass after a previous drop.

"We were all disappointed and [ticked] off when he dropped the ball. But I told him to be ready, we're going back to him," Cutler said.

If this was the real Cutler, Mora and Martz owe him a huge apology. Said offensive coordinator Ron Turner, who once yanked a would-be scholarship offer to Cutler at the University of Illinois, forcing him to go to Vanderbilt: "The reality is he's a great leader. The reality is we could not be happier with Jay. We could not be happier with his demeanor, with his leadership, with his intangibles, with his work ethic, with what he brings to this team."

Cutler is much more humble in victory. He knows the pressure that comes with this particular job, and if he looked skittish in Green Bay, he was confident at his new home stadium. "It means a lot," he said. "It means a lot to this team. We've had a lot of pressure and expectations on us since I got here."

It also meant a lot to beat Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who was unstoppable in the early minutes but eventually succumbed to an inconsistent running game. Crunch is supposed to belong to Big Ben. Because of Reed's misses, Cutler was handed the stage and coolly led a drive that resulted in Gould's winning kick. "He's accomplished a lot more than I have in a short period of time," Cutler said of Roethlisberger. "That's what makes him so great, makes him the elite quarterback that he is. The four, five years he's been in the league, they're always there. They're always winning Super Bowls. He's the guy who has raised everyone's level of play. Everybody else is trying to catch up with him."

The Steelers were only happy to return their own praise. "In the face of pressure, he made great decisions, put the football in some good locations, and guys converted third downs," coach Mike Tomlin said. "They did enough to win, we didn't. We accept responsibility for it."

Whether these teams win a championship this season depends on their running game and health on defense. The Bears will be without linebacking star Brian Urlacher for the rest of the season after he suffered a dislocated wrist. "Can't replace a Brian Urlacher. Can't do it," Cutler said. "We can't expect one guy to go in there and do what he does on the field, off the field, in the locker room. It just can't happen, so the responsibility falls on the whole building."

Which is why it helps to have a kicker who kicks the ball straight. Suddenly, the issues and injuries that haunt teams were answered by a football team's smallest player. You don't really think about missing kicks," Gould said, "because when you do that you're going to miss kicks."

Reed, admittedly, was thinking of missing kicks. "It was a bad field, but we play on a surface at Heinz Field that is not very great and I have been fine there," he said. "It is not an excuse. I didn't slip. I missed two kicks. Days like this, I didn't do good on anything. My kickoffs were bad, I thought, and I missed two very important kicks. If I had missed two kicks and we still won, I would have still been in the same mood.

"Obviously, the field wasn't bad enough for Robbie to miss. He hit his dead middle, and I was off."

Hence, the smiles and the tears. Two men, two feet, too many emotions swaying in the wind.