Bears, Briggs agree to one-year contract extension
A potential season-long headache was averted on Wednesday when the Bears rewarded seven-time Pro Bowl linebacker Lance Briggs with a one-year contract extension that will keep him through the 2014 season.
“I’m grateful,” Briggs said. “I’m just very appreciative right now that the work has been recognized and that it got handled as fast as it did.”
Briggs, who signed a six-year, $36 million contract before the 2008 season that has two years remaining, led the Bears in tackles last season for the third time in four years with 147. Briggs also was voted to his seventh straight Pro Bowl.
Briggs had been angling for a new deal since before last season. It took just a few weeks to get it finalized after his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, initially spoke with Bears general manager Phil Emery at the NFL Scouting Combine in late February.
“We’re very excited for Lance and for the Bears,” Emery said. “This is a very positive step for our team in our efforts to win championships.”
Briggs, 31, has been a model of consistency since he was drafted in the third round out of Arizona in 2003. He has missed just four games and seven starts in nine seasons and has had at least 120 tackles every year since his rookie season, when he had 81.
Briggs has led the Bears in tackles in 2004, ’08, ’09 and 2011, and he finished second in 2005, ’06, ’07 and 2010. According to STATS Inc., Briggs leads the NFL with 65 ½ stuffs (a tackle of a rusher for negative yards) over the past nine seasons. Over that same time period, he also leads NFL linebackers with 3 interception returns for touchdowns.
With Briggs happy now, the team’s only pressing contract concern is running back Matt Forte. He has yet to sign his guaranteed $7.742 million contract tender as the team’s franchise player because he wants a long-term deal with $16 million or so guaranteed up front.
Forte is expected to boycott the Bears’ off-season program and perhaps training camp and the preseason if he doesn’t have his deal done by the July 16 deadline.
“He’s a grown man, and I’d tell him to do what he feels is right,” said Briggs, who played a season as the Bears’ franchise player before he got his six-year contract. “You do what you feel is right because I can’t come in his house and say that I’m going to feed his family, and neither can you, and neither can anybody else. It’s up to him to feed his family, and it’s his life and his career.
“He knows what his value is, and I think all of us know what his value is. So he knows what he’s doing. I will continue to support him and hope that he gets the deal that he knows he deserves, and we all do.”
Aside from that sticky situation, Briggs believes the Bears, whose 8-8 record last season pales compared to the Packers’ NFL-best 15-1 mark, are capable of competing with any team in the NFL after several off-season moves.
“It feels like a miracle with what they’ve done,” Briggs said. “This off-season has been extremely aggressive. (We) went out and got a bunch of guys who are going to help us win a championship. I know that other teams looking in on the moves (believe) that we are a contender. And even guys that have signed know that they signed here instead of other places because we’re a contender and continue to put more and more pieces to the puzzle to help make this championship run.
“Would I call us the Dream Team? No, I would not. But I would say we’re a championship-caliber team — potentially. We have to go out and transition it to the field.”