Jay Cutler’s advice for Mitch Trubisky: ‘Go underground here, bud’

Maybe the Halas Hall televisions should be shut off after all. Take it from someone who knows about the perils of being a quarterback in Chicago.

Jay Cutler told Barstool Sports’ “Pardon My Take” podcast, which aired Wednesday, that he could tell Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky was annoyed during some news conferences last season.

“For a young guy like him, being in Chicago, it’s a tough town,” Cutler said. “Expectations were huge, so you watch some of his press conferences and stuff — you could tell it really bothered him sometimes, I think. Whether that affects him, I don’t know how it affects him. It has to somehow.

“The more he can get away from all that stuff, the better for him going forward.”

Asked what advice he’d give Trubisky, Cutler paused.

“Oh goodness. . . .” he said. “Don’t read anything . . . go underground here, bud.”

Trubisky infamously mused last year, when the Bears had lost four consecutive games, that he was trying to get the TVs inside the building turned off.

But Cutler added that it’s important for players to know the pulse of the public conversation about them — even if it’s short-hand from a team’s public-relations staff. Otherwise, he said, players can get blind-sided at news conferences.

“You have to know where the arrows are coming from,” he said.

There’s an irony, of course, in Cutler giving anyone news-conference tips. He battled reporters with his trademark sarcastic style when he arrived in Chicago, though he mellowed in the years leading up to his retirement.