Lance Briggs is still a baby, but at least he’ll be a baby in a Chicago Bears uniform this football season. Briggs who was tagged as a franchise player in March vowed to never play for the Bears again. He demanded that the Bears either remove the tag, or trade him. What a punk. Of course, I do think that Briggs is the best linebacker on the Bears, but I think that might be for a different discussion.

Briggs signed a 1 year contract valued at $7.2 million dollars on Wednesday. The deal is that the Bears cannot tag Briggs as a franchise player next year. This is good for Briggs in a couple of ways.

1. Well, he’s getting paid the average of the top 5 players at his position ($7.2 million) this year.
2. He is a free agent after this season free to sign with whomever he choses for however much they’re willing to pay him.

Is it good for the Bears?

1. They knew what they were going to pay him, it’s pretty simple math, and Jerry Angelo seems sharp enough to tackle averaging 5 numbers (even if they’re 5 large numbers)
2. They get their best linebacker in camp, on time.

Now, here’s the dilemma. What happens when Lance Briggs continues to show that he is indeed the best linebacker on the Bears? The Bears will either need to pay him (Briggs rejected a 6 year, $33 million dollar contract last spring) after this year, or let him walk.

The Bears obviously are a team with the talent to get to the Super Bowl… they did last year. Let’s pretend here and say that the Bears rampage through the weak NFC and make it again to the Super Bowl (actually that doesn’t take too much pretending), and win the Super Bowl (I told you there’d be pretending). Do they let him walk? or are they obligated (by the request of their fans - we’re still pretending) to sign Briggs to see what kind of dynasty the Bears could put together? I’m not sure about any of that, and it’s all pretty far-fetched knowing the recent history of Super Bowl losers (yep, still hurts to write that).

I’m just glad they got him signed… Now all we have to worry about is Rex.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Chicago Bears, Football, NFL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.