Ogunleye one sack-happy camper this season

Bears sack leader Adewale Ogunleye has never bought into the concept of pressure on the quarterback being just as good as getting him on the ground.

"I've always said that sacks (were important); this is what I do," said Ogunleye, who leads the Bears with 41/2. "When we weren't getting sacks, I wasn't happy. This team wasn't happy."

That's how it was for most of last year, when the Bears had just 28 sacks and were No. 29 in the NFL in sack percentage. Ogunleye had only 5 sacks, the lowest total of his career for a full season.

But this year has been a different story. The Bears are No. 6 in sack percentage and Ogunleye is on pace for his first double-digit sack season since 2005, when he had 10.

To start the season, Ogunleye ranked ninth in the NFL in sacks since 2002 with a total of 601/2. With 21/2 sacks against Detroit last week, the Bears are 10-2 in games in which Ogunleye has multiple sacks.

The 32-year-old, who majored in English at Indiana University, is in the final year of a six-year, $33.4 million contract he signed after leaving Miami off a Pro Bowl year. Another big sack season will guarantee him another big contract, even though it might not be with the Bears.

On Friday night, the Bears acquired 26-year-old defensive end Gaines Adams from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, possibly as a hedge against losing Ogunleye to free agency if teams start a bidding war to get the eight-year NFL veteran from IU and Staten Island, N.Y.

On Sunday night, Ogunleye and the Bears can make amends for last season's loss to the Falcons in which they failed to sack quarterback Matt Ryan. That was one of five games in which they didn't have a single sack, and they know they need to do a better job rushing Ryan tonight.

"Some teams get the ball out (quickly), three-step drops and they pass it, so you can't do anything about that," Ogunleye said. "But this year we've been able to get after quarterbacks both with the blitz and with (just) the front four. It's just been fun. I think all the work that we've done in the off-season is starting to pay off, and that's a great confidence boost for us to keep going on in the season."

Ryan has been sacked just twice all season - and not at all in the past three games.

"I think they confuse people with a lot of misdirection and a lot of their formations," Ogunleye said. "I haven't seen a defense really play them aggressive. I've seen a lot of people just sitting back and almost playing patty-cake, looking too much. We've just got to put our heads down, put our blinders on and focus on our keys and hopefully that will take us to the ball."