Tony Siragusa Struggled to Not Directly Accuse John Fox of Lying About Jay Cutler Injury
When Bears-Cardinals returned from halftime on Sunday, the most salient news was the status of Jay Cutler, who’d gone to the locker room early after failing to tackle Arizona safety Tony Jefferson on a pick-six. Not that one can accurately diagnose an injury by observing body language on television, but it had sure looked like Cutler would be evaluated for a concussion, or at the very least an upper body injury.
And so it was a plot twist when Fox reporter Tony Siragusa stammered that John Fox told him Cutler was out with a hamstring injury. Taken aback by the explanation himself, Siragusa clarified that this was “not too convincing.” Consequently, some are accusing the Bears of chicanery. Mike Florio writes:
If, as some believe, they fibbed about the actual injury, why would they do it? For the answer, let’s rewind the clock to 2003, when former Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer suffered a separated shoulder during a game and former Broncos coach Mike Shanahan said Plummer had a concussion.
Shanahan was fined for the fabrication, which he defended for strategic reasons. In the event that Denver’s other quarterback at the time had been injured and Plummer had been forced to re-enter the game (yes, in 2003 a guy could re-enter a game with a concussion), Shanahan didn’t want the opposition to know Plummer actually had a bad shoulder.
Whatever the injury may be, an accurate report should emerge within the next day or two. It will be interesting to see if John Fox gets snared in a lie, and, if so, if there are any consequences.