Imagine your name is Jay Cutler and you are the quarterback for the Chicago Bears.

Besides loathing Twitter right about now, you just led your team to the NFC Championship Game.

During the regular season, you absorbed 52 sacks and countless more bone-crushing hits.

But on Sunday against a bitter rival and in front of home fans who have never really accepted you, something catastrophic happens.

You hurt your right knee.

You don’t know when it happened — maybe it was on the first snap, during the first quarter or shortly after your first poorly thrown pass — but it happened.

And you couldn’t finish the most important game of your life.

You had to have a good reason for not toughing it out. One of your peers, Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, played most of the season with the same injury.

Another one of your peers, Philip Rivers of the San Diego Chargers, played in the AFC title game several years ago on a knee held together by duct tape and baling wire.

Instantly, players around the NFL start questioning your guts, your toughness, your heart.

Your body language on the sideline doesn’t help. You look aloof as always, like you’d rather be playing Tetris on your iPhone than helping out the third string QB charged with the task of getting you and your team to the Super Bowl.

You walk around the sideline as if nothing is wrong. You are barely limping.

Yup. If your name is Jay Cutler, it stinks to be you right now.

As I was watching the game, I thought Cutler was a coward.

I thought unless his leg was snapped in half like Joe Thiesmann, he should be out there.

Many NFL players thought the same, and went on a Twitter binge, slamming Cutler on the social network site harder than any defensive end or linebacker could.

But then I thought more about it.

Maybe Cutler was making a profound selfless act.

Perhaps, unlike many athletes who feel the need to play hurt no matter the cost, Cutler and the Bears made the decision that he simply couldn’t do the job with his balky knee.

Cutler may have thought, “Sure, I could give it a go, but I’d only hurt the team.”

Of course, we don’t know this for certain because Cutler is his own worst enemy. He’s standoffish, immature and comes across as cuddly as a cactus.

That’s why the NFL community was so quick to pummel him.

They have the right to do that. If a player’s skills can be questioned, so can his intangibles, such as desire, toughness and, yes, heart.

Cutler may have the heart of the Tin Man. But maybe he thought being a tough guy would be bad for his team.

That takes more courage than playing hurt.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.