Bears general manager Jerry Angelo didn't waste any time thanking the agents for the free agents the club signed on Friday.
After all, he was ecstatic to have Julius Peppers, Brandon Manumaleuna and Chester Taylor on board and Angelo is always mindful of the public relations the spotlight can offer the player representatives.
But Carl Carey, Paul Sheehy and Ken Sarnoff were just half of the equation in getting done contracts that total $121 million in maximum value, a stunning amount. Consider for a moment that while Angelo was panned for a lack of urgency in free agency in recent years, he committed his free-agent class in 2008 to his own. The Bears extended or re-signed 10 players that year to deals totaling $186 million.
The man pushing the pencil on the Bears' end is contract negotiator Cliff Stein, who doubles as the club's in-house counsel. Stein was hired in 2002 and has prior experience as an agent, so that unique background makes it easy for him to see where the agents are coming from. Andrew Brandt, who worked in the Green Bay Packers front office for nearly a decade and was credited with their fine navigation of the salary cap, also had a similar background.
"You always shoot for the stars but if you don't end up there, hopefully you end up high," Angelo said. "We felt like we had a good game plan and again it worked. Again, I am going to talk about Cliff Stein, he did an unbelievable job coordinating a very difficult task and I have to give a lot of credit to what Cliff, certainly our coaches and then the cooperation with the agents. It took a tremendous team effort and I don't want to underscore that."
The contracts players sign often are dozens of pages long and there are fine details. Cookie cutter contracts only exist for late-round rookie draft picks and for small one-year deals given to veterans. Putting together blockbuster free-agent deals takes a plan because the Bears executed the launch of free agency efficiently.
Stein has done other strong behind the scenes work for the team. He's been on the forefront of finding ways to create salary cap savings moving forward. With no cap this year, and with an uncertain labor future, he'll be relied on to keep the Bears in the best shape possible moving forward.
(Photo by Chris Walker / Tribune)
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as good and rosey this all sounds all this money will go to waste without a real QB and a real head coach because that' where the leadership starts and the rest follows.
Rarely is there a Bears front office man we can speak highly of. Stein is one of those. Maybe we should have him work on his own contract so we keep him!!!
Cliff Stein...Steady as a rock, quietly going about his business, rarely does anything pop up that is not perfectly executed.
Lovie and Angelo have it easy when a guy like Stein is doing all the grunt work, but considering how good our cap has been managed over the last 8 years, and all the big money deals we have done during that time, it is a huge credit to Stein. We did not have to do a Tennessee roster purge, or constant re-negotiations of contracts. We set them up the right way, so we always have room for emergencies, and pay our players well. They had better pay him well..
Year after year, Cliff Stein is awesome. Every year, except for Benson, all draft picks are signed and report to camp on time. All the credit goes to Cliff Stein.
Non-story.
Yawn....