Posts tagged ‘Urlacher’

Well it’s finally over and more than likely most Bears fans will just be happy to stop hearing about it. When Brian Urlacher arrives from training camp (which begins Wednesday) he will sign a deal that will include $6mil signing bonus, add $1mil to his salary for the four years remaining on his original deal (thru 2011), and finally adds the 2012 season to the deal for $7.5mil.

At the end of the day the deal looks an awful lot like what the Bears initially offered ($5mil bonus and an extra $1mil/yr) so a lot of people feel like Urlacher caved. I personally think it’s an extremely fair deal given that Urlacher has some injury concerns at this point, but has also maintained an extremely high level of play while the cap has increased by over $35mil. Unfortunately Jay Marotti wasn’t so kind in his thoughts on the deal. All in all Urlacher got $18mil and a contract level that is more representative of his status as one of the best LBs in the NFL. However, this season will go a long way to determining if the money was worth the PR hit he took in the off-season.

Epsiode 100 of Bearscast will be out later this week to discuss this move and the opening of training camp.

A lot has been made over the last week of Brian Urlacher’s decision to hold out of voluntary work outs in order to bring attention to his contract. As in all cases there are two sides to every story. The Bears would like to point to the fact that the Bears signed Urlacher to a record breaking 9yr/$59mil contract that runs through 2011 and they feel has held up over the years. Urlacher’s camp hightlights the 30% increase in the salary cap since the defensive captain signed his contract. Making things all the more complicated is earlier admission of Urlacher that he has an arthritic back at the start of 2007 and then he followed up the year with surgery on his neck. It could be those injury concerns that has Urlacher grasping for more guarunteed money. For now it’s not too big an issue, but if Urlacher decides to hold out through mandatory what do the Bears do?

Oh yeah… and then there’s that Tommie Harris extension…

Well in the fine tradition of “where the hell did that come from”, Brian Urlacher apparently had surgery on his neck recently.

Now we all know that Urlacher went through the season with chronic back issues. It caused a lot of debate about whether or not Brian would be worth resigning either at the end of his current deal or tearing up his current one to make it closer to his market value. Now Urlacher is having “routine” surgery done on one of the most sensitive and crucial part of the body. Seriously, outside of drilling a hole into his head does anything scare you as much as neck surgery?

The Bears are trying to pass this whole thing off as routine. Just a minor problem that was found during a post-season physical and kept under wraps until after he went under the knife. They seem to think people will just move on because he won’t miss training camp. I think it’s arrogant of them to act like it’s not a big deal an apparently do as much as they could to keep it from the public. I was really hoping this off-season might have a little less drama than last year… so far the Bears are not off to a good start.