FanHouse Jay Cutler

Though most had the Minnesota Vikings as the favorites to win the NFC North heading into the season, nearly everyone agreed that either the Chicago Bears or Green Bay Packers -- or both -- would at least pose a challenge to the Vikes' second straight division crown. Instead, we're taking this division race off life support and putting it to rest after Week 9. The 2009 NFC North champions will be the Vikings. They can now focus on securing home-field advantage in the playoffs.

The reason for the above sentiment is that both the Bears and Packers were abysmal, in different circumstances, Sunday afternoon. The Pack went into Tampa Bay and lost to the formerly winless Buccaneers, while the Bears were absolutely manhandled for the majority of the afternoon by a fickle Arizona squad.

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Cut-N-Go is Fantasy Football FanHouse's weekday roundup of the NFL news with fantasy football impact.

If you came away from your fantasy football draft with Steve Slaton, you probably used a late first-round or early second-round pick on the Texans running back and had visions of another 1,200-plus yard rushing campaign. Things aren't going as planned for you or the Houston running back.

After losing his fifth fumble of the season, Slaton was benched on Sunday in favor of Ryan Moats, who ran for 126 yards and three touchdowns. Now, says Dale Robertson of the Houston Chronicle, Slaton will have to battle for his starting job.

It would be easy to look at the 30-6 final score in the Bears' victory over the hapless Cleveland Browns and think everything went well for the home team. It would be easy to see Matt Forte's 90 yards and two touchdowns rushing and think the running game is back. Let's not do things the easy way and fool ourselves into thinking there wasn't something problematic on display Sunday in the Windy City, because the offensive line is flat-out horrible.

The pass protection was porous. Jay Cutler was sacked four times. He was hurried all day and had to scramble five additional times. The Browns entered the game with just 12 sacks in seven games.

The Washington Redskins aren't the worst team in the NFL, but they're certainly the most chaotic. And the most disdainful of their paying customers.

They flounder on the field and they flounder off it -- especially off it, where owner Daniel Snyder, a self-absorbed billionaire who views his employees as pawns to be manipulated and eventually discarded, is loathed now by fans who are among the most loyal in sports.

Consider this tweet Tuesday night from a fan who calls himself @kn0nothing: "Had to sneak in our Sean Taylor memorial banner last 3 games.''

Why? Because Snyder and his minions have banned banners, many of which were uncomplimentary to them and their 2-5 team.

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Jay Cutler can fail on and off the field, it seems*. This should come as a relief to Broncos fans and the obsessive-compulsive set who demand symmetry in their daily lives.

In addition to deftly filling the huge void left by predecessors Kordell Steward, Chad Hutchinson and Rex Grossman, Cutler also has horrible taste in music. Via the Chicago Tribune (by way of Tremendous Upside Potential and TBL)

There were plenty of QB outings to love last week, with first and foremost being Tom Brady (No. 2 in Week 6) and his amazing first half against the awful Titans secondary. Matt Schaub (No. 3) threw four TDs and nearly had a 400-yard game as well. Aaron Rodgers (No. 1) wasn't quite as good, but 350-plus yards and two TDs is nothing to scoff at.

But then again, that was last week, and you're more concerned about the upcoming week. So who do we like to captain the ship this week? Most people should love Brady again, but I'm taking a bit of a different route with him, as I'll explain after the rankings.

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After paying a hefty price, in terms of draft picks and Kyle Orton, to acquire quarterback Jay Cutler this past offseason, the Chicago Bears have now likely ponied up a hefty monetary price as well. Exact terms of the deal have not been disclosed just yet, but the Bears have announced, via press release, they have come to terms on a two-year contract extension with their quarterback. He's now locked up in Chicago through the 2013 season.

Upon hearing that Jay Cutler was engaging in trash-tweeting with one Chad Ochocinco, my first impulse was obvious. Given his inaccuracy in the red zone, Cutler surely would hit the wrong letters on his cell-phone keyboard and require spell check. It wasn't wise for the Bears quarterback to answer Ochocinco's cybertaunts, not when he's being soundly embarrassed by Kyle Orton -- Kyle Orton, ladies and gentlemen! -- in first-half returns on the NFL's biggest offseason trade.

Yet there was Cutler, firing back when he should have been (a) working on his flawed passing mechanics, (b) pleading with management to find better weapons and (c) studying game film to determine why he went 2-of-9 with a bad interception inside the Atlanta 20-yard-line in Sunday night's loss. This while Orton has been the model of efficiency and near-perfection for a Broncos team that is 6-0 under coach Josh McDaniels, the first-year revelation who dared to unload Cutler and misses him now about as much as an unflushable toilet. Considering the mounting evidence against him, didn't Cutler have something better to do than play Twitter tag with a troublemaker?

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Each week in the NFL, there are players that impress and players that distress. One week a certain quarterback might toss four touchdowns and run around pointing skyward, while the next he's laying on his back, holding his facemask as the other team returns one of his three interceptions for the game-winning score. With that in mind, here's Studs and Duds.

Studs

Tom Brady, QB New England (29 of 34, 380 yards, 6 TDs) -- People were questioning his knee this season. He seemed jittery in the pocket, made throws he didn't used to make, and wasn't leading the Patriots like he had during those three Super Bowl years and undefeated regular season in 2008.