Maybe the most newsworthy thing about Marty Booker is something that didn’t happen.
The Bears’ top receiver signed a $28 million contract in June that makes him a Bear for the next seven years. The important part of the deal as far as he and other players are concerned was the signing bonus, the up-front money that is usually the only certain thing in football’s usually non-guaranteed contracts.
Booker had the lottery-esque experience of being handed a check for about $3 million, more than enough to treat himself to any new car on any dealer’s lot. But not Booker. He bought one for his wife, but he still drives his Toyota Land Cruiser with its 85,000 miles.
“My teammates look at it and say, `We’re tired of looking at this,'” Booker said laughing. “But that’s the real me. If I change that, they should be worried. So I keep my little truck.”
When Booker signed his first contract as a third-round pick in 1999, he took care of his family. He bought his mother a house and a car, helped his father out, helped his sister out and got all the big family outlays out of the way.
“Right now I’m just trying to make sure I put the money up, let it build,” Booker said. “Later on down the road, when I’m ready to retire, I’ll have it and can sit around and get fat.”
Will success change Marty Booker before that? Will he start getting fat sooner rather than later? The Bears don’t think so. That was part of the reason general manager Jerry Angelo shifted the financial focus of the receiving corps this off-season.
In his team structure under the salary cap, Angelo has major money for one receiver. So he negotiated a pay cut with Marcus Robinson and rewarded Booker, who had the franchise’s first 100-catch season, with a record total contract for a wideout. Not bad for someone who was a disappointment to the Bears and himself only a year earlier.
When Robinson and Bobby Engram were injured in 2000, Booker had his chances but admits he did not take the big step he and the Bears hoped for. He finished with 47 catches and something still to prove–that he could handle the pressure of being the centerpiece of the passing game.
He proved it last year at a time when, with Robinson again down, the Bears went to Booker with a mission statement.
“When you’re playing behind somebody else, as much as you try to push yourself, the pressure’s not on you all the time,” coach Dick Jauron said. “We said, `Marty you’re the guy and you’ve got to come through for us or we’re not going to have a chance to be a good football team.'”
Booker came through at a time when Dez White was inconsistent and David Terrell still had not learned to be an NFL receiver. Booker, at times, was the Bears’ only real downfield threat.
Where he had cracked slightly under the pressure in 2000, he reveled in it last season. Booker led the Bears in receptions in 11 of their 16 games, finishing second in the NFC to Keyshawn Johnson’s 106 catches but with eight TDs to Johnson’s one.
But he also finished with something more to prove, at least to some doubters. He netted 1,071 receiving yards; eighteen NFL receivers totaled more. Like quarterback Jim Miller’s resentment at being branded a journeyman, Booker bristles at the label that has been stuck on him.
“I’m still trying to get that `possession’ [label] off me,” Booker said. “I’m trying to be a complete receiver: running, blocking, going inside, the dirty work, and go deep outside when I have to. But some people still look at 100 catches and say, `But he barely got 1,000 yards.’ The things I did for this team, the small things, those matter to me.”
It would be nice to be appreciated, and the money satisfied a lot of that. So did fans who after a big catch early in training camp, chanted, “Mar-ty, Mar-ty, Mar-ty,” and received a theatrical bow from Booker.
He is having fun, but there is unfinished business beyond the big contract.
“I’m still trying to make a name for myself and I have team goals,” Booker said. “I still have a lot of improving to do and want to get my name out there to let people know what I can do.”
