Josh McCown falls into the category of one of those people who loved Jay Cutler. He insists to this day that the former Chicago Bears quarterback was misunderstood because of his unique personality and imperfect body language. He may not have handled the media well all the time, but that doesn’t mean he was a bad guy. Far from it.
Last year during an interview with The Athletic, McCown recalled several of his more than 1,000 teammates he’s had over a 17-year career. A considerable number of them came during his time in Chicago including Julius Peppers and Brian Urlacher. However, some of his fondest memories came during his time with Cutler.
One of the reasons for this? Cutler loved video games, particularly of the old school variety.
He really loved the game of football and enjoyed playing the game. He is such a fierce competitor. That was my favorite thing about him. We had such epic ping-pong battles and “Tecmo Bowl.”
“I forget how it came up. I think we started talking about “Tecmo Bowl” in a meeting. He’s a guy who knows how to crush online shopping, so he goes out there and grabs a Nintendo or whatever, and next thing I know we’re playing “Tecmo Bowl.” He was really good at it. Really good. We had a lot of fun with that.”
Jay Cutler proves that he can be a man of impeccable taste
Say this for Cutler. The man has excellent taste in games. To this day people still believe Tecmo Bowl remains the best football video game of all-time. The fact it has such a strong following of people who play it to this day says a lot. Now the question is could Cutler dominate with just any team or did he use the classic cheat of simply playing with Bo Jackson?
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Jokes aside, it’s nice to see that Cutler was a guy who could have fun. His attitude was hard to take at times. Yet nobody can ever say the guy wasn’t a competitor and didn’t love football. He would have stuck around for as long as he did and absorbed all those brutal hits if he didn’t. Question his decision-making if you want. Never question his heart or love of the game.
If nothing else, heed the warning of McCown. Anybody out there who decides to challenge Cutler to a video game battle, it’s best to avoid Tecmo Bowl at all cost.
