Lance Briggs and Bernard Berrian employ the same agent, Drew Rosenhaus.
Berrian should give Rosenhaus a fat raise first thing Sunday for convincing the Minnesota Vikings to overpay the wide receiver $42 million for six years, including $16 million in guarantees that doubled the Bears’ best offer.
Briggs, on the other hand, should fire Rosenhaus immediately.
The surprise six-year, $36 million contract with $12 million up front that Briggs hastily agreed to Saturday night should have been sealed with a handshake and a white flag. Quite simply, he caved.
Briggs’ total surrender capped two years of avoidable acrimony over a contract dispute that began when the linebacker turned down a $33 million, seven-year offer that doesn’t look much different from the deal Briggs just signed.
He had waited two years for this weekend, this moment. Rosenhaus had assured Briggs it would be worth it once teams started throwing money at his feet. Then this weekend came and Briggs was stuck in Arizona waiting for the phone to ring. It didn’t.
Were teams turned off by Lance Briggs the player or the person?
Between April 2006 and now, of course, Briggs vowed never to play for the Bears again on national TV, at Rosenhaus’ behest, changed his mind and reported to training camp on time. Slowly, his image around the city and the league changed too.
Sure, Briggs pocketed $7.2 million for getting the franchise tag last year, but it was costly to his reputation.
It all could have been so easily avoided by removing ego, emotion and drama from the equation, advice Briggs got from the media but never from his agent. Maybe now Briggs can be the guy he was before he started chasing the almighty guaranteed dollar.
Big picture, Briggs returning to the Bears’ defense means they don’t have to replace a Pro Bowl linebacker and allows them to free up a little more money, finally, to give Brian Urlacher the bonus payout he seeks. That issue didn’t go away Saturday. Neither did Tommie Harris’ dissatisfaction with his opening contract proposal.
Be careful, Bears fans, in cheering this development too wildly. Don’t confuse your shock with glee and go crazy celebrating the status quo of a 7-9 football team. The Bears are still 0-for-2008 in finding new players to fix the offense — which remains priority No. 1.
The return of Briggs will permit the Bears to believe they can put back together a dominant defense that will allow them to compete for an NFC North title. And they can. But it’s an overstatement to say it does much more than that.
Besides, it’s hard to get too excited about the Bears after the day they lost the one guy who gave their passing game legitimacy — Berrian.
Deep is always where Berrian has done the most damage in the NFL. The Bears found out for themselves just how deeply Berrian can hurt a football team.
This will be the gaffe that keeps on giving for the Bears, and it didn’t have to happen. General manager Jerry Angelo gambled and lost by letting Berrian hit the open market rather than using the franchise tag to keep him in Chicago and negotiate a long-term deal or pay him a $7.86 million salary.
Heck, Briggs is a perfect example of how a team against all odds can retain one of its own players by employing the franchise tag.
Had Angelo used the contractual tool at his disposal, Berrian and Briggs would be Bears today, and there would be real reason to celebrate at Halas Hall.
Losing Berrian hurts the Bears’ offense more than keeping Briggs helps the defense.
The Bears clearly don’t agree or else they would have gone after offensive free agents they might afford with a different sense of urgency. The Jets signed guard Alan Faneca. The Falcons courted running back Michael Turner, who is wondering why his hometown team has ignored him. The Vikings wooed Berrian on the same day the Browns signed Donte’ Stallworth.
The Bears? They have chatted with the agent of Bryant Johnson, who never has had a 50-catch season.
Angelo maintaining sobriety in the NFL marketplace of offensive players might drive a Bears fan to drink. Had Berrian landed in, say, Oakland, Angelo’s decision might not have backfired as loudly in Chicago. But Berrian putting on a Vikings hat Saturday not only weakened his old team but strengthened a division foe the Bears will struggle to beat twice a year.
Top to bottom, the move might make the Vikings a better team than the Bears.
A defense that suddenly has fewer questions might argue with that. But it’s also the same defense that was the fifth-worst in the NFL with Briggs starting 14 games.
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dhaugh@tribune.com
