Sorry, Urlacher

So Brian Urlacher wants a new contract from the Bears, and he is willing to sit out mandatory workouts to show how serious he is. Oh and he has FOUR YEARS left on his current deal. Here's his rationale:

Urlacher, who said he has recovered from neck surgery, has four years left on his nine-year, $56.5 million contract, but he believes the deal is outdated.

"It's easy for people to criticize me for wanting [a new deal], and I understand that it's a contract and I signed it," Urlacher said, according to Yahoo.com. "But this is the NFL, and if I'd signed it and I'd played like [expletive], they'd have cut me or tried to get me to take less. In my mind, there's no difference. If they can 'break' a contract, I have a right to ask for more if I play well enough.

"When I signed my deal the salary cap was $75 million. It's, what, $116 million now? Things have changed. I understand that all of this, to a normal person, sounds crazy. It's all relative to what you do. If you're a chair-builder, and you feel you're the best at what you do, and other chair-builders are making more than you, then you'd want to be paid more, too."

(Chair builders don't sign 9-year contracts with large signing bonuses. This sounds like Scottie Pippen all over again.)

He's right that the Bears could cut him any time during the contract. That's because in the NFL, there are almost no guaranteed contracts. When free agency first started back in the 1990's, there were a couple of guys who had them, but nobody since has, I believe. So sure, this is bad for Urlacher. But let's dig a little deeper.

Every time a big contract is signed, we always hear about how much guaranteed money the player is getting. It's always much more than the average salary for the life of the deal. The reason (generally) is that the signing bonuses are quite large in comparison, with the money prorated over the life of the contract to make it advantageous for cap purposes. It's all explained here.

However, a reason the team wouldn't want to cut him is that his prorated 4 years of bonus for cap purposes would be accelerated to this year, leaving the team with less money to spend on other players.

So obviously this is all more complicated than Urlacher's analysis. What's really going on here?

After Urlacher's original rookie contract expired, the Bears gave him his current contract. At the time, it was very large for a linebacker, probably the highest in the league if I recall correctly. So he got a huge signing bonus back then.

Why did he sign a 9-year contract rather than a 5-year one? Give youself a gold star if you said it's because he got a bigger signing bonus! He could have opted for a shorter deal with a smaller bonus, but he got greedy.

I don't see why the Bears should renogotiate with him now, because, as the article states:

Despite playing with back pain, Urlacher led the Bears in tackles last season with 123 and added five sacks and five interceptions.

That's right, he developed some back problems last year. He also turns 30 over Memorial Day weekend. Clearly, he is going for a big payday while he can still command one, because there is a chance of his career going south quickly.

If I were running the Bears, I would just sit tight. The only leverage Urlacher has is his huge popularity, and that's not enough when he has 4 years left on his contract.