MRI shows Bears QB Cutler sprained MCL

Jay Cutler might have been better off had he been injured in a more visually conclusive way. A knee-twisting, leg-bending hit replayed several times in slow-motion close-ups at least would have allowed those watching Sunday's NFC Championship Game to see the severity of the injury, or at least how it happened. Had Cutler gone down clutching his leg, at least there would have been no question that he indeed was hurt.

Instead, he had a mild limp and stood on the sideline for the second half watching his Bears lose to the Packers. The rest of the football-watching world - including more than a few NFL players - suspected that the quarterback had tapped out, that the issue was not his knee but his guts or his heart.

Yesterday, the Bears announced that wasn't the case. An MRI revealed a sprained MCL in his left knee - reportedly a Grade II tear that usually takes three to four weeks to heal - and coach Lovie Smith and others came to Cutler's defense.

"I haven't seen it before," Smith said of the other NFL players in particular taking to Twitter and other social media outlets to rip Cutler. "It seems like if you're in that fraternity, you would be stepping up for your fellow man, especially when you don't know . . . You don't know what was going on. Jay didn't take himself out of the game. He wanted to go back in. He was injured and went back in in the second half. So I see it as the complete opposite of how it's being portrayed right now."

Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew, who had some of the most critical things to tweet about Cutler during Sunday's game, told The Associated Press that his comments comparing the quarterback to Urban Meyer were aimed more toward the former Florida coach quitting.

"I never attacked him, called him soft or a sore loser," Jones-Drew said. "I never questioned his toughness. I think people took my joke out of context. I was taking a shot at Florida fans."

Jones-Drew reportedly has received death threats over his Twitter remarks, which on Sunday included this: "All I'm saying is that he can finish the game on a hurt knee . . . I played the whole season on one." Jones-Drew actually missed the final two games of the season because of his knee injury.

Smith noted that Cutler's Bears teammates have stood by him. One former teammate, now a Giants linebacker, said it isn't in Cutler to quit.

"He was the most-sacked quarterback in the SEC, never missed a beat, and won the offensive player of the year award," Giants linebacker Jonathan Goff, a teammate of Cutler's at Vanderbilt, told Newsday in a text message. "He's a great competitor and one of the toughest."

There are some who maintain that Cutler could have played through his injury - Bears great Mike Ditka said on the radio yesterday that "I would have had to be completely knocked out to come out of that football game."

Doctors, however, say an MCL tear such as Cutler's is hard to spot but can be dangerous.

"While it may have appeared Cutler could walk fine and even run straight ahead, lateral movement would have resulted in his leg giving way and possibly greater injury," said Dr. Craig Levitz, a sports medicine specialist and chief of orthopedic surgery at South Nassau Community Hospital. "While it is easy to sit in front of the TV and criticize Cutler for not playing, sitting out was the right thing for his career and gave his team the best chance to win . . . "

Levitz also said a Grade II tear equates to severe damage but not a complete rupture. "[It] would have been unstable to play on and impossible to play quarterback with and would have risked further injury," he said.