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Phil Simms can relate to Jay Cutler’s situation. Well, sort of. Simms is one of the bright minds talking football, as well as a Super Bowl-winning quarterback who weathered the ups and downs of a long career that came to an end in 1993. He was 38. He’d had enough.

And then teams came calling.

Just like the Dolphins did for Cutler after he retired from the Bears.

“I had about three chances (to return to the league),” Simms said on The D.A. Show on CBS Sports Radio. “One team came up here to my house and worked me out for two hours. It was like, ‘Wow, how much do I have to show you here that I still can do this?’ They made me an unbelievable offer – more than I’d ever been paid in the NFL – and guaranteed it for two years. It was awesome. And I thought, ‘This is it. This is kind of what I want, and that way I know I’ll be done, and then I’ll go into coaching.'”

He mentioned it to his wife. That’s when the idea went sideways.

“She says, ‘That’s great. We’ll come visit you on weekends,'” Simms recalled. “I said, ‘What?’ (She said), ‘Well, yeah, we’re not leaving. We’re staying here. The kids are in school.'”

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Simms stayed retired.

“I said, ‘Hey, I’m not doing that live-in-a-hotel thing by myself,'” he said. “That never works out for players. Really, looking back, it’s a good thing it didn’t work out. Fifteen years, that’s a lot of hits. I don’t think I needed two more years of getting beat up or whatever. I’m glad it worked that way.”

Which leads to Cutler. He un-retired and moved to South Florida to live out of a hotel without his family. And …

“For Jay Cutler, yeah, I’m sure he’s (thinking) ‘Wow, what have I got into?'” Simms said. “When it comes around, all you think about as an athlete is the good side: ‘Okay, I’ll go back, I’ll play, they’re a pretty good team, I’ll lead them to the playoffs – this could be really great.’ And then you forget: man, all the practice, all the toughness, all the adversity. In football, it never goes right. It always goes wrong. You’re always fighting adversity. If the teams wins (but) you play terrible, you’re terrible. You play really well (but) the team somehow loses, you should have made one more play. Things like that.

“So I’m sure he’s in a tough spot right now. I don’t know how bad or how long he’s going to be out. But let’s be honest, too: The money is so big, sometimes that’s hard to turn down. You can’t make a rational decision when the money’s that big.”

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