[CBFF] Bears need to get drunk and spend :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Jay Mariotti - Sent Using Google Toolbar

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Bears need to get drunk and spend :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Jay
Mariotti<http://www.suntimes.com/sports/mariotti/818926,mariotti022908.article#>

Bears need to get drunk and spend

February 29, 2008
BY JAY MARIOTTI <inbox at suntimes.com> Sun-Times Columnist

Sobriety should be a welcome concept at Halas Hall, where the occasional DUI
offender and weed fiend has muddled the football workplace. But forgive me
for cringing when Jerry Angelo, who is $32 million under the salary cap in a
defining offseason for the plummeting Bears, speaks of nonindulgence in a
skinflint sense.

Can you say, Misers of the Midway?
 » Click to enlarge image
 Bears general manager Jerry Angelo
(Al Podgorski/Sun-Times)

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``The thing you have to do is create sobriety in the marketplace," Angelo
said. ``Because you have the money doesn't mean you have to spend all the
money. You have to put values on players and then you have to stay
disciplined to that, or else what you're going to wind up doing is keeping
all those players at an exorbitant amount of money -- way beyond how you
valued the player.''

He speaks like a man who has job security, but not at all like a general
manager whose team was in the Super Bowl only 13 months ago and is
freefalling faster than Gary Busey on a red carpet. If ever the Bears were
going to spend the stinkingly fat profits raked in by every NFL franchise,
it's this weekend, the start of their most important free-agency period in
years. Why? Because their offense might not gain a first down next season,
their once-dominant defense is cracking, and Brett Favre is not retiring,
contrary to a false posting on the official Green Bay Packers' Web site that
briefly had Chicago in mass delirium Thursday. In particular, the Bears
should be devoting big pieces of their pie a la money to Lance Briggs and
Bernard Berrian, who have their bosses by the you-know-whats thanks to the
Burger King barker himself, agent Drew Rosenhaus, who will stab Angelo with
a three-pronged hot poker if, as expected, he guides Briggs, Berrian and
special-teams ace Brendon Ayanbadejo to other teams.

This is no time to embrace an austerity movement. No, this is a time for
humility, proactivity and cover-your-buttity. The Bears must realize they
erred in not locking up Briggs last winter, before Brian Urlacher began
showing signs of breaking down, and make him a better offer than San
Francisco's expected guarantee of more than $20 million. He is a premier
linebacker in the league, good for three or four seasons of high-level
playmaking, and the defense will slumber without his
Lamborghini-on-the-Edens intensity. But their chances of signing Briggs and
the others don't bode well when their most recent offer to Berrian was a
lowball -- $8 million in bonus money in a five-year, $25 million contract.

If that opens the door for the division rival Minnesota Vikings to sign
Berrian, the one receiver who makes Rex Grossman occasionally look decent,
you will have my permission to kick Angelo in the shin. Berrian's absence
will leave the Bears with no proven NFL receivers, not a good thing when
your quarterbacks are Turnoversaurus Rex and The Neckbeard, Kyle Orton, and
your running back is sleepy Cedric Benson. Now, of course, there are plenty
of possibilities in a free-agent period that officially started late
Thursday night -- past Angelo's bedtime, I'm sure.

He could spend $30 million and win the bidding for running back Michael (The
Burner) Turner, the local native who might be sought by Houston, Detroit,
Atlanta and Arizona. He could chase two available wide receivers in D.J.
Hackett and Donte Stallworth, assuming the Bears would have more interest in
Kate Moss than the extremely expensive and potentially problematic Randy
Moss. A decrepit offensive line could be bolstered by guard Alan Faneca, a
seven-time Pro Bowler. The Bears even could wave an offer sheet at Derek
Anderson, who emerged as a potent quarterback in Cleveland last year, or a
veteran such as Todd Collins, who would be a steady fallback when Grossman
and Orton keep trading ballcaps and clipboards. Brian Griese is a goner, as
he should be.

But Angelo wants to be sober in the marketplace when boring, bleak times
call for a spending boozer on a week-long bender. ``A year from now or two
years from now, you're going to look back and that money shrinks up and
you're going to need to [sign] other players and all of a sudden those
players become targets, and we don't want to get into that cycle where you
have those cap casualties,'' said the GM, king of the run-on sentence.
``Then you have that dead money. You have to look at it from a broad
picture, not just isolate this year and how much cash and how much cap room
you have.''

All I know is, the New England Patriots executed a major spending splurge
last offseason and almost pulled off a perfect season. Continuing Spygate
suspicions aside, they remain the how-to model for franchises in
no-man's-land limbo, which describes the Bears after a

7-9 crash to earth. Bill Belichick has dumped his share of players when
contracts become issues, but he'd never let his team be sabotaged by a
perpetual quarterbacking black hole. Nor would he let someone as important
as Briggs get away. To compare New England's system to that of the Bears is
comical, and if the Rosenhaus Trio scatters elsewhere, be ready for a lot of
Lake Forest-based badmouthing of Briggs and Berrian.

``If money is the bottom line, I don't want that player,'' Angelo told
reporters at the NFL Combine, painting himself as a hypocrite. Oh, he can
slap a franchise tag on Briggs last year and say it's just business, but
when Briggs finally has the contractual leverage, the Bears want to make him
the bad guy by saying their offer is ``very fair.'' Angelo is welcoming
other teams to blow away the Bears with offers, saying, ``I'm not letting
that team rule our thinking. That's where the sobriety comes in.''

And what if one man's sobriety is another's opportunity? ``Then we'll have
to find another player," Angelo said. ``We'll have to have confidence in
ourselves, in our coaches. If you don't operate that way, you are truly
going to be a train wreck.''

Does he realize how transparent that is?

Does he realize the franchise already is a train wreck?

In their zeal to achieve fiscal conservatism, the Bears better make sure
they sign someone. They say they're reserving an eventual windfall for
Tommie Harris, which does make sense, especially after Oakland signed a
defensive tackle named Tommy Kelly to $18.1 million in guarantees Thursday.
But spending shouldn't be selective when a team is on the decline. Think
big, be big.

For years, the Bears groused about how they needed a new stadium with decks
of heavenly priced luxury suites to ``be competitive'' in the NFL. Thanks to
way too much public funding, they got their way, charging insane sums for
the suites and other preferred seats in a stadium that hideously forces
green-glassed corporate greed onto a 1920s war memorial. They picked a bad
time to announce price hikes last week, with club seats now costing between
$245 and $350 and non-club seats ranging from $68 to $108. When a franchise
swimming in profits raises ticket prices, the general manager shouldn't be
emphasizing ``sobriety in the marketplace.''

Starting today, we'll find out if the fans are the only ones who'll be
buzzed.