Welcome to my football Hall of Fame/Hall of Infamy induction post. I usually drop the Hall of Fame part because my inductions tend to be all about the infamy, but I mixed in a guy this year who didn't do anything to warrant infamy but needs to be recognized for his small part of NFL history. The other inductees, well...yeah, kinda infamous, but at least none of them have homicides on their docket. Let's get started.
- Jay Cutler -- QB -- Broncos and Bears, mostly. Infamous for: The worst body language of any team leader in NFL history. It takes an enormous amount of bitch face for someone to get universally hated for it, but no matter the game, no matter the team, no matter the situation, Jay Cutler served bitch face piping hot with no concern for "team leadership." He served it so good that he was the subject of one of the earliest sports internet memes, the "Smokin' Jay" meme where his nonchalant face with a photoshopped cigarette dangling from his mouth was placed any and everywhere from Timbuktu to the Taj Mahal. He earned the derision because regardless of what his team was doing, he really did look like he DGAF. Cutler was promoted to starter over Jake Plummer in Denver in 2006 despite the Broncos being 7-4 at the time, which showed how badly coach Mike Shanahan wanted the rookie Cutler in there instead of Plummer, but Cutler went 2-3 and Denver missed the playoffs. Two years later, he was shipped off to Chicago after new coach Josh McDaniels came to Denver and cleaned house. The ups and downs of being a Bear gave Cutler lots of chances to show his face, but happy or sad, he always looked indifferent, and that gave rabid Bears fans the chance to project their frustrations onto him. "He doesn't have the fire or the passion! He's not tough!" the Chicago fan base howled on the typical Bears postgame sports talk hotlines. The gold standard of projection came when Cutler took Chicago to the NFC title game at home against the hated rival Packers, only to get knocked out of the game in the 3rd quarter. The sight of Cutler trying to walk off the leg injury but not returning to the game made fans and other players project a lack of desire to play onto him, and Caleb Hanie's awful performance in his place didn't help. Cutler was spotted walking to dinner that night with then-girlfirend Kristin Cavalleri, and the howling reached a fever pitch. "He wasn't hurt! I saw him going up stairs to have dinner!" An MRI the next day revealed a sprained MCL, but it didn't matter. Cutler's rep was cemented as a quitter, reinforced by his refusal to get mad and defend himself against the accusations. His "Don't CARREEE" attitude helped him stay even-keeled but it worked against him in the public eye. As a result, despite his status as the all-time leader in passing yards, TDs, and passer rating, Cutler is not held in high regard to most Chicago fans. If they could have taken down Green Bay and made a Super Bowl run, he would have probably earned Bear Nation's respect, but instead, he's a symbol of failure and falling short of expectations. And he still doesn't GAF.
- Mike Vanderjagt -- K -- Colts. Infamous for: Shooting off his mouth and making his QB1 call him out at the Pro Bowl. You have to really stick your foot in your mouth to make a teammate publicly punk you out, and Vanderjagt had quite the big foot to swallow. He was the Indianapolis Colts PK for an eight-year stretch after coming from the CFL. During this stretch, the Colts kept coming up short trying to make the Super Bowl with highly regarded but "can't-win-the-big-one" QB Peyton Manning and HC Tony Dungy. After another playoff exit in 2003, Vanderjagt did an interview with a Canadian TV station, and maybe he thought the comments wouldn't get back to the States, but he called Dungy too mild-mannered and questioned Manning's leadership. Manning was asked about those comments during the Pro Bowl a few weeks later, and he didn't hold back his feelings about it:
Vanderjagt did his part, making the Pro Bowl himself the following season, but he also helped the Colts choke with some ill-timed missed FGs, including his last attempt in the playoffs in January 2006 to eliminate the Colts. Indy dumped him and signed former Patriot and new HOF Adam Vinatieri, and naturally, the Colts went on the next season to beat the Bears and finally win it all. So maybe it was Dungy being too nice, maybe Peyton didn't know how to lead...or maybe they had to get rid of the liquored up kicker and that solved everything. Regardless, Mike Vanderjagt has a place in football history, becoming the first (but not the last) Colts ST to get infamy for yapping and not playing.
- Dennis Byrd -- DL -- Jets. Infamous for: Suffering a devastating injury in-game but providing hope afterwards. Byrd was a 2nd-round pick of the New York Jets out of Tulsa, and he was productive, racking up 28 sacks and a safety in his four years. His career was cut short on Nov. 29, 1992 versus the Chiefs. Byrd was springing forward for a sack but instead his head collided with the chest of teammate Scott Mersereau, breaking his fifth cervical vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed on the Meadowlands turf. Viewers on CBS watched the horrific scene live. The EMTs removed Byrd's body from the field very slowly as time seemed to stand still. Everyone watching had the same thoughts flash through their head: Is he okay? Is he alive? Well, he wasn't okay in the sense that he couldn't feel anything from the waist down. But Byrd was able to do something as he was riding off the battlefield: He raised a thumb in the air for the world to see that he was, on some level, alright. The crowd applauded in relief that they had not just witnessed a death, and for us watching at home, it was also an indicator that we can go on. The brutality of football was never more stark than at that moment, and yet Byrd with that thumbs up contributed to the humanity of the sport. Since then, the thumbs up has become the universal symbol given by any warrior taken down on the playing field that, hey, I'm okay, I'm not able to continue to fight with my brothers right now, but grand scheme, big picture, I'm alive and kicking. It allows the fans and loved ones to breathe and accept that whatever catastrophic injury just occurred, the player is conscious enough to let us know it's going to be all good. Sadly, like a war veteran surviving combat just to come home and get caught in gang crossfire, Byrd busted his ass to walk again only to die in a car crash ten days after his 50th birthday. But his legacy is secure: His #90 jersey was retired by the Jets, and his thumbs up is the everlasting sign of hope by every injured player.
- Dennis Miller -- Commentary -- ABC. Infamous for: Showing that there are limits to esoteric references in sports broadcasting. Recently, there have been public and private discussions about who is qualified to engage in sports talk, who's a real journalist, who's just a show. The NFL institution that is Monday Night Football in 2000 went waaay left in an attempt to go in a new direction. Well, way right as it turned out. After an audition alongside play-by-play man Al Michaels, ABC hired Saturday Night Live alum and stand-up comedian Dennis Miller as their color guy. And the sports world was not ready. Really, who would be ready for references to Greek mythology and religion and literature and pop culture or whatever historical reference Miller thought would be appropriate for a Goddamn football game?? It was so bad that a company came up with a Web site called Dennis Miller Demystified which allowed the earliest smartphone users to follow along in real time to see the definitions of the arcane references Miller was making. And you kinda needed a real-time phrase finder to follow what the hell this wackjob was going on about. Predictably, Miller's schtick wore thin very quickly to everyone except maybe the most hardcore professorial lovers of obscure Revolutionary War inside jokes, and after John Madden left FOX in 2002, ABC snatched him up and quickly moved him next to Michaels in place of Miller. It's quite the legacy that Dennis Miller left in sports: No one has ever tried to throw a comedian full-time into a booth again, but those Barstool goofs and the ESPN cabal of Embrace Debaters may have been inspired by the MNF gambit. After all, like Miller, they seem to be trying to show how smart they are with commentary that has nothing to do with anything. And it can be argued that it started with this dickhead.
- Ricky Williams -- RB -- Saints and Dolphins, mostly. Infamous for: Choosing pot over profits consistently. If you're wondering about Ricky Williams and if he's still as eccentric today as he was back in the day, the answer to that is obvious in the fact that his legal name is now Ricky, or Errick, Miron. Miron is the last name of his second wife Linnea, who he married in 2022. That's right, the man infamous for putting on a wedding dress for a photoshoot with Mike Ditka when the Saints drafted him is now taking the last name of his wife, as if she's the husband and he's the wife. If there's one player in the history of football that would decide to pull a stunt like that, he's probably the one. Ditka as coach and de facto GM of the New Orleans Saints was so hungry to draft Williams in 1999 that he took all of their other picks in that draft and their 1st and 3rd pick the next year and shipped them to Washington just to move up to 5 to draft Ricky. No team in NFL history had ever had one and only one pick in an entire draft. Williams was a stud at Texas, winning the Heisman in '98. So a team moving up to grab him wasn't crazy, but throwing away every other pick in that year's draft was. Injuries hampered him in his three-year stint with the Saints, and they dealt him to Miami for a couple of 1st-round picks. He broke out in 2002 with a monster year for the Fins, 1853 rushing yards and a Pro Bowl nod. But the signs were there that Williams wasn't a regular player who needed to find his way. He did interviews in full helmet and dark visor. He had long dreadlocks that were part of his public persona for years, and then one day he shaved them all off. Then the marijuana failed tests and suspensions began racking up. He got popped in May 2004, then before he could get another failed test on record during training camp of that year, he just quit and officially "retired" at age 27. Williams came out of retirement the next season after Miami limped through a 4-12 campaign without him. He made it to February of 2006 before he failed another drug test, resulting in a year-long suspension. Where do you go to ply your trade if the top league doesn't want you? Why, Canada of course! The CFL gladly took Williams for a year, although the controversy compelled them to make a rule afterwards that a suspended NFL player couldn't come into their league. Williams came back to the Dolphins and managed to avoid any more failed tests, even turning in a 1000-yard rushing season in 2009. But you can't help but wonder how much more Ricky would have accomplished if he could just put down the blunt in his prime. He is the poster child for bad choices, seemingly taking years of his potential HOF career and leaving them up in smoke.
