ChicagoSportsBlogs : Non Compete

Holy Schnikies! Lance Briggs just resigned with the Bears. The 6 year, $36 million dollar deal came as a surprise to me and everyone else at the bar last night. (Happy Birthday Obicle). I guess Jerry Angelo was right to stick to his guns. Technically, he stuck to what he knows, which is defense. The money that Briggs got was clearly the money that Bernard Berrian was demanding. Bernard signed a 6 year deal with our NFC rival Vikings. I had a hard time finding how much the contract was for, but this site (a Vikings site) says that Bernard got a cool $16 million up front. Wow! I'll be honest, I'm happy to see Angelo give that cash to Briggs instead of Berrian.

I spent the better part of last week arguing with a certain CSB blogger this point. Specifically, how IMHO Berrian was not worth the money he was asking for. I understand how market dynamics work. We have a weak wide receiver free agency pool this year. The supply is slim. The demand is probably average. Bernard was the best available wide-out not named Randy Moss. (more on him in a later post). He has every right to play someone for a sucker out on the open market. I stand my early comment, I think we would be better off letting Berrian go and signing someone like Dante Stallworth. Stallworh signed a 7 year deal with the Browns. He got $35 million, $10 million up front. Let's compare shall we?

Berrian	27 years old 71 catches 951 yards 13.4 avg 5 TDs
Stallworth	27 years old 46 catches 697 yards 15.2 avg 3 TDs

So the breakdown is pretty easy. The pro Berrian side of the house is going to look at the 71 catches and 951 yards and point to our horrible offensive line, run game, and quarterbacks as evidence of his ability. A lot of people in the pro Berrian camp will also dismiss Stallworth's numbers. He only caught 3 touchdowns? He only had 697 yards receiving! Those numbers are crap. They're especially bad when you compare the quarterbacks that are throwing to each of these guys. Berrian has better numbers than Stallworth, and he had Grossman throwing to him! Not so fast my friends.

The pro Stallworth camp (that's me) has some good points too. First, Berrian isn't terrible, he just isn't a number 1 wide receiver. He might be a number 2 wide receiver, and his numbers prove it. Stallworth had exceptional numbers considering Tom Brady threw the majority of his passes to Moss and Wes Welker. That leaves Stallworth as the third option on that team. A third option that caught 3 touchdowns and almost 700 yards total. That's pretty impressive. It's not like the Patriots were playing the Cardinals all season either. They faced some tough defenses.

I'm not saying Stallworth is better than Berrian. Far from it. I'm just saying that he would have been cheaper than Berrian. Cheap doesn't always mean getting a worse player. I think they're both pretty equal when it comes to game days. If the Bears weren't willing to sign Berrian, I think Stallworth would have been a nice addition. Turns out we will never know. What we do know is that Angelo decided to punt on the Bears' offensive problems in this year's free agency market. That could mean 1 of 2 things. He is either planning on drafting a running back and an offensive lineman, or we're going to stick to our typical plan. Draft defense and pray they can score 14 points a game.