Fox Sports issued an on-air apology Sunday for using fabricated newspaper headlines critical of quarterback Jay Cutler on its season-opening Chicago Bears broadcast.

As a Tribune report detailed last Sunday, the Fox telecast flashed three ficticious headlines across the screen -- "Cutler Leaves With Injury," "Cutler Lacks Courage" and "Cutler's No Leader" -- that Fox color analyst Daryl Johnston described as "actual headlines from the local papers in Chicago." A Tribune search yielded no such headlines in any newspaper in the United States.

Fox studio analyst Curt Menefee apologized during Fox's NFL Sunday pregame show.

"Before we move on, I want to go back to Week 1, during the Atlanta-Chicago broadcast, when our production crew that was doing that game displayed an incorrect graphic," Menefee said. "Now, the production team told our announcer Daryl Johnston that a taped video package that made air came from actual headlines concerning Bears quarterback Jay Cutler's performance during last year's NFC Championship Game. While in fact, they were not. FOX Sports regrets this mistake and apologizes to Cutler, the Chicago Bears organization and everyone involved"