Coach Dick Jauron has put the Bears on an informal “quarter system,” looking at the season in fourths for purposes of perspectives and goal-setting. The Bears now enter the fourth quarter of 1999 looking to resolve certain matters on and off the field.
There remain unsettled contract situations with personnel director Mark Hatley and his top assistants. There is still about $2 million left under the 1999 salary cap that the organization wants to put toward contract extensions for current players and possibly signing someone else’s castoff. And there is the overriding matter of four games left to play.
The immediate issue is a 5-7 record and a flickering playoff hope. After the loss Thursday in Detroit, players held to the belief that the playoffs still could be reached. They could make the playoffs with a 9-7 record, but only twice in the 1990s has 8-8 been good enough.
“We’ve got a game at home and now everything’s a must win so it puts a little more pressure on us,” said tackle James Williams. “But you’ve got to do what you have to do. We have a chance for the playoffs and that’s our ultimate goal.”
Because they are still mathematically alive for the playoffs, the season is not yet ready to be given over to player development. Indeed, rookies such as Warrick Holdman and Rosevelt Colvin have been worked into the defense already, and quarterback Cade McNown is expected to be kept on his ease-in schedule as long as there is hope for the playoffs.
The Bears remain in some respects a team still in search of its identity, not to mention a running game. Special teams is beset with kicking problems. The defense had 19 sacks its first five games but has eight in the last five and has allowed an average of 287 passing yards in those games. The offense that began the season befuddling opponents seems now itself befuddled, with a rushing game that never ranked below 19th in the last 20 years now among the league’s worst.
“The running game is momentum,” said guard Todd Perry. “You have to get in a groove and we haven’t gotten in a groove all year. It is frustrating considering how well we’ve run the ball in the past. But it’s a different offense now. With this offense, we’ve got to be effective early in the running game for it to get going, otherwise we’re just going to line up in the shotgun and throw the ball.”
Perry is among 18 players scheduled to become either restricted or unrestricted free agents at season’s end, a number that includes 11 of the current 22 starters. The Bears signed Williams to a contract extension earlier this month and Hatley hopes to extend the contracts of one or two more players before the final game, the deadline for using 1999 salary-cap money.
Hatley, the architect of the drafts and free-agent acquisitions of the last two years, is one of the key “extensions” under consideration. He has received an offer for a three-year extension worth more than $400,000 a year and is expected to reach agreement on the deal in December. Terms are expected to allow him to leave for a general manager post elsewhere, a role not part of the Bears’ plans.
The contracts of college scouting director Bill Rees and pro personnel director Rick Spielman are scheduled, like Hatley’s current pact, to expire next May. Neither has agreed to an extension yet.
“Our situations are pretty much tied to Mark’s,” Spielman said. “The thing is to get Mark done first.”
