Well, it has been over 24 hours since Jay Cutler’s return to the Mile High City and in the intervening hours we have also sat through yet another Brett Favre return. My two favorite, puclicity-shy, mature, conservative, understated ‘game manager’ quarterbacks. It’s like Christmas in August!

I will even admit that Favre played well tonight. He scrambled away from trouble on several occasions and never once made one of those patented Favre-ian throws directly to the defense. Even I can concede he looked like a completely competent quarterback…for a half…of a preseason game…against the Texans. If he and Childress are truly happy to be Adrian Peterson’s luggage carriers and be a change of pace this could actually work.

At least for a few weeks.  

No matter how well Favre played though, I think we can all agree that his cheap shot on Texan safety Eugene Wilson was the highlight of the night. I don’t mean that his almost-hip or knee shattering play was a highlight. More that the real highlight was the awkward silence from Ron Jaworski and John Gruden that greeted Mike Tirico’s actual criticism of Favre. It was almost like Tirico announced “You know what? I am pro-swine flu. Finally clear out some of those pesky children and old people that just get in the way”.

You can almost imagine the looks that Gruden was giving him in the announcing booth when Tirico said negative things about Favre. Chucky doesn’t like people saying mean things about Favre. Actually, Gruden doesn’t like criticism of anyone. In the couple quarters of the game I watched, I heard Gruden drool over the greatness of Dan Orlovsky, Chester Taylor and Tarvaris Jackson.

What is it about the announcing booth that makes former players and coaches incapable of criticizing other players and coaches?

Of course, last night we had ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT PRE-SEASON GAME OF ALL TIME’. I wish I could sit here and do the ‘Told You So’ dance about Jay Cutler but much like his older ‘gun-slinging’ mate in Houston tonight, Cutler played well.

Both the Bears and the Bronco offense started slowly while the defenses dominated the first quarter. However in the second quarter while the Bronco offense seemed to shrink back into its shell like a frightened turtle, Cutler’s line started playing better and he began picking his way through the defense, showing all of the best of his career to date without the inevitable back-breaking interception like he did last year.

Yes, Cutler played better than his Bronco counterparts – even I won’t deny it. But if Cutler earned a ‘B’ (he really only had 1.5 good drives – don’t forget one touchdown drive consisted fo 2 handoffs after a long Devin Hester punt return) then the Broncos earned an ‘Incomplete’. How can we really gauge the Bronco quarterbacks when they weren’t allowed to throw more than 5 yard downfield?

I can only hope that McDaniels is playing the offense conservative so as not to show anything for the regular season. While I am in favor of the short controlled passing game, it only works when there is a regular threat of throwing down the field. We can only hope that when the Brocnos get to Cincinnati in two weeks, they try to throw downfield at least a few times. Assuming they find a starting quarterback of course.

So, really at the end of the day, the game taught us nothing. We know Cutler is more talented than any QB on the Bronco roster, we also know that he has no good receivers (seriously, Greg Olsen as the #1 threat?). We know the Bronco defense has some holes in it and we know that unless the Broncos find a running game, they are going to struggle this year.

Really the most important thing we learned was a new and even less informational description of an injury. During the early part of the game Eddie Royal’s leg injury was described as ‘lower extremity injury’ on NBC.

Is it just me or are there only three ‘lower extremities’? Couldn’t they have at least used the noun ‘leg’ so the dirtier of us don’t immediately assume some amazingly painful injury to the ‘third extremity’?

Though I can’t help but note that if Brian Urlacher is to be believed, Jay Cutler actually only has 2 lower extremities.

Sorry, old habits die hard.

Sort of like Favre’s career.

Tagged as: bears, brett favre, broncos, chicago, denver, jay cutler, minnesota, vikings