Urlacher

[Dan Michler]

Sad that most great NFL careers seem to have to end this way now.  Its just the way of the business.  Once your body has broken down, nobody is going to use up salary cap space that could be used on a younger player with more promise.

Its too bad Urlacher couldn't handle it with a little more class like Greg Jennings did, but you had to expect that.  Apparently he wanted 1 year $4M, but the Bears would only offer 1 year $2M.  In his opinion the $2M was disrespectful.  Something tells me he's about to be disrespected by the rest of the NFL as well.  Too bad. 

As a fan, its hard to be too depressed about missing a guy who couldn't stay on the field any longer.  His mind is in denial about what his body is capable of, just like every other aging pro athlete since the beginning of time.  Football is a brutal sport.

[Tom McManus]

There are only a handful of guys that go out on their own terms.  Football is brutal.

[CEValkyrie]

With an offseason to get healthy I would have like to seen them sign him for another year. He's been pretty reliant over his career. If they could have signed him for 3 million they should have done it.

What in the world are they going to do at the LB position? Briggs is the only LB we have. They better get to work in FA and drafting.

[Dan Michler]

With an offseason to get healthy

His knees will never be remotely healthy again for the rest of his life.

[Jon Brakel]

I think what Urlacher thought was disrespectful was that it was 2 million take it or leave. He thought they should have been willing to negotiate a little.

[Dan Michler]

I think what Urlacher thought was disrespectful was that it was 2 million take it or leave. He thought they should have been willing to negotiate a little.

So if the initial offer was $1.5M and then they came up to $2M, it would have been okay?  I would say starting out with your best offer was a sign of respect.  Brian has a sympathetic story in his head about how he was wronged, but I'm not going to buy it.  We'll only hear 1 side of the story because the team isn't going to publicly say anything negative about him.  The classy thing for Brian would have been to turn down the offer and publicly thank the team and fans for 14 good years.  Then go out and see if you can find a better offer.  His problem (like a certain #4 up North), is that he has a notion that the team 'owes' him another good contract because of his past performance.  The Bears are only interested in paying for future performance, as are the other 31 NFL teams.  Emery and Trestman have to win now, or they'll be the ones out of a job in a couple years.  Like Tom said, the NFL is a brutal business.

[jasonc]

I think what Urlacher thought was disrespectful was that it was 2 million take it or leave. He thought they should have been willing to negotiate a little.

So if the initial offer was $1.5M and then they came up to $2M, it would have been okay?  I would say starting out with your best offer was a sign of respect.  

Absolutely yes, without a doubt.  In this just like any other negotiation, the best deal usually occurs when both sides feel like the other party gave up something. 

Especially if what he said was true about the Bears asking him to make the first offer.  Supposedly, Urlacher's agent made an offer and the Bears reply with a "take it or leave it" offer....that approach should not have been utilized in this situation. 

When the Bears didn't budge at all, Urlacher obviously felt disrespected.  Unfortunately, the Bears didn't learn anything from past deals with him...and the certainly should have while dealing with a HOF-caliber player.  I didn't expect him to turn the other cheek and make the classy move, but that certainly would have been nice instead of what we are seeing now.

I'm not trying to say he's worth more than $2M for the 2013 season, because he probably is not.  At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if he does play for another team, but it would take a small miracle for him to make it through the season without any injury issues.  Either way, I was just hoping that he would ride off into the sunset this offseason instead of making an Olin Kruetz type of move.