Patience -- Angelo must have a plan

Jerry Angelo sure can test your patience.

Maybe the NFL's first couple of days of free agency has gone as far as to exhaust yours.

Sorry, but I'm not going there … not yet, anyway.

Losing wide receiver Bernard Berrian to the Minnesota Vikings for a reported $42 million over six years isn't going to make me waver on Angelo.

In case you missed it, I have been an Angelo supporter since the days when the Bears made him a candidate to become their general manager.

My primary NFL informant explained to me that the Bears would be getting a full-service GM who could scout, oversee a personnel department and manage the salary cap.

As far as I can see, that's what Angelo has done.

I know, I know, he also has demonstrated impaired vision for offense generally and a blind spot at quarterback specifically.

Complaining about Angelo was easy during his first few years at Halas Hall.

He lost a player after failing to check a box on some form. A few of his first-round draft picks bombed. He let a couple good linebackers go. He failed to solve the club's eternal quarterback dilemma.

Then, somehow, the Bears wound up winning the NFC in 2006.

It's hard to imagine how that happened other than Angelo made enough good decisions to build a good enough team.

So today I'm like you, wondering who will replace Berrian, whether Lance Briggs is the next to depart and why Rex Grossman is still in Chicago.

Now, this is going to shock you but I'm figuring the general manager who stumped me by getting the Bears to the Super Bowl deserves the benefit of the doubt just one season later.

Maybe, just maybe, the Vikings were the dummies for reportedly guaranteeing $16 million of Berrian's contract.

I mean, the worst thing a general manager can start doing is to pay good players like Berrian great money like it appears Minnesota will.

If some other team is willing to do for Briggs what the Vikings did for Berrian, well, maybe they're dumb, too.

I don't know. I'm just mumbling out loud here, yes, admittedly to keep from grumbling.

One of the reasons Angelo tends to get a little more time before my patience completely goes is the job of Bears general manager isn't the NFL's easiest.

Angelo certainly doesn't have the budget to work with that, say, Dallas' Jerry Jones and Washington's Daniel Snyder give their GMs.

Some places the signs read, "Don't feed the bears," but in Lake Forest they read, "Bears must feed the McCaskeys."

That's an awful large family to support. If the Bears clear $30 million in a year, it must stretch a lot further among the McCaskeys than it would with most other NFL owners.

That means fewer dollars to pay up front in the form of exorbitant signing bonuses for free agents, and fewer to spread around to assistant coaches.

You see, not all salary caps are created equally.

Anyway, I'm making -- though hopefully not concocting -- excuses for the way Angelo conducts business.

The last time I started losing patience with this general manager, the Bears wound up in the Super Bowl.

This time I'm going to sit back and assume he has a plan that isn't quite obvious so far.