Running back Curtis Enis and the Bears spent Monday working out final terms of his three-year contract, leaving the No. 1 draft choice hoping to make his Chicago debut Friday after only two practices with his new team.
The final obstacle to the $5.5 million deal was agreement by both sides on penalties, in the form of returning a portion of his $3.6 million signing bonus, that might be imposed if Enis is involved in another off-field incident. Enis was cleared Monday by a Dallas grand jury of sexual assault charges.
The deal contains no incentives, but if Enis rushes for 3,900 yards over the three years, he will receive a tender offer from the Bears for $2 million in the fourth year. But Enis must have at least 1,000 yards each year to qualify for the tender offer.
“He’s very pleased,” Enis’ agent, Greg Feste, said Monday. “He’s so ready to play. He’s pumped. He’s staying in shape. He told me today, `I hope they let me play on Saturday. I just got to play.’ “
Not so fast. Enis last worked with the Bears’ offense in June, and the plan was to throw him in against the Buffalo Bills and their ninth-ranked rushing defense Friday night in Soldier Field. But he remained in Texas during Monday’s final contract talks and missed the Bears’ two practices. The Bears practice once Tuesday and once Wednesday.
“I was told he’d be here today. He’s not,” said a clearly irritated coach Dave Wannstedt. “If he was here (Monday) he would definitely have played. Who knows? This is just par for the course.”
Because of the Enis holdout, the Bears hope to receive a temporary roster exemption that would allow them to delay making a cut in order to find room for Enis. A running backs depth chart with Enis, Edgar Bennett and Bam Morris puts a squeeze on James Allen, Darnell Autry and Ronnie Harmon, some of whom will not make the 53-man roster.
How soon Enis will be able to play–he will be trying to take playing time away from veterans Bennett and Morris–will be partly up to Enis.
“He’s kind of far behind,” said fellow rookie Alonzo Mayes, himself a holdout through the first week of camp. “But it’s conditioning, that’s what it really amounts to. That’s all he’s lacking, with the carrying of the pads, the banging and stuff.”
Both sides are getting some things they wanted. Enis will be a restricted free agent after the 2000 season and can test the free-agency market. And he receives nearly two-thirds of his money in the first year, about 10 percent more than most rookie deals.
The Bears limit their exposure with a three-year deal, the only one for a 1998 first-round pick to date, and a signing bonus of about half what a six-year deal would have required. They can guarantee themselves Enis for a fourth year by giving him a tender offer before the start of free agency in 2001. They have agreed that any tender offer will reflect Enis’ market value rather than the usual league-established amount.
Enis, who wanted a $4 million signing bonus, received $3.6 million and can receive additional workout bonuses in the second and third years of his deal. The Enis contract is the shortest for a Bears No. 1 pick since Curtis Conway in 1993. John Thierry (1994) and Walt Harris (1996) signed for five years and Rashaan Salaam (1995) for four.
The negotiations unfolded in stages. The first was a pure money issue, the initial mid-July demand of $45 million over seven years. The second obstacle, three weeks ago, became voidable years, with Enis asking for a six-year deal that would shorten to four if he achieved certain performance goals. The Bears, however, insisted on very high goals, and the talks stalled with Enis threatening to wait until next year’s draft and play somewhere else.
Late last week, the voidable-year issue was rendered moot as Enis began looking again at a three-year contract that allowed him to become a free agent sooner. But after three years, players are still restricted free agents, not unrestricted as Enis wanted, and the Bears were unwilling to petition the NFL to approve a deal that waived the restricted free-agent year.
Tempers were fraying at that point. Enis and Bears Vice President Ted Phillips exchanged harsh words in a Friday phone call, for which Feste said Monday Enis intends to apologize to Phillips.
But the two sides were getting close and hit upon the way late Friday to satisfy both the Bears and Enis. Teams may retain a right of first refusal on contract offers to their own restricted free agents by making a tender offer before the start of free agency. The amounts of tender offers, which are for one-year contracts, are set by the league.
