Chicago QB Cutler plays it cool with playoff debut

Associated Press

lake forest, ill.

If Jay Cutler is nervous heading into his first playoff game, it was hard to tell this week. It actually was hard to tell anything about the strong-armed quarterback’s mindset heading into the postseason.

This time, Cutler avoided the deep route.

“Guys are business as usual,” he said.

The Chicago Bears will make their first playoff appearance in four years when they host the Seattle Seahawks in a divisional game on Sunday, and Cutler will get his first taste of the postseason. So it wasn’t exactly business as usual around Halas Hall on Friday.

Not since the 2006 team made the Super Bowl have the Bears (11-5) been working this late, but they’re here thanks to a dramatic turnaround that led to the NFC North championship and a first-round bye. Cutler, meanwhile, is leading a winner for the first time since his senior year in high school.

Now, the Bears are staring at a team that slipped into the playoffs with a 7-9 record and knocked off defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans last week behind a memorable touchdown run by Marshawn Lynch and a superb effort by Matt Hasselbeck.

The three-time Pro Bowl quarterback threw for four touchdowns as the Seahawks stunned the Saints 41-36 at Qwest Field. Now, he’ll be making his club-record 11th postseason start.

“As a player, it’s the stage that you love to play on,” Hasselbeck said. “It’s so much fun.”

He remembers feeling “no anxiety” when he made his first playoff start in 2003.

The Seahawks were playing his former team Green Bay for the second time that season and Hasselbeck learned a lot about playing in the postseason. He wound up with 305 yards, but Green Bay won 33-27 in overtime when Al Harris returned an interception 52 yards for a touchdown.

That game is most remembered for Hasselbeck’s bold prediction after Seattle won the overtime coin flip. “We want the ball and we’re going to score!” he declared, moments before Harris picked off his pass.

“It was just one of those things where I said ’The heck with it, I’m just going to have fun. Just play loose,’” he said. “And I played so much better that way, just not uptight and naive. I had no idea the attention that playoff games get, the hype that playoff games get.”