There aren’t that many teams around the NFL with a need for a middle linebacker who only knows how to play the 4-3, so it seems Brian Urlacher isn’t going to have an easy time finding a new team after 13 years with the Chicago Bears. The likeliest of options? The Minnesota Vikings.
Urlacher is offended by the way the Bears decided to low-ball him, offering him only $2 million a season on a one year contract. Urlacher began the negotiations asking for $11.5 million on a two year deal, but was willing to drop and lower his asking price to $3.5 million, one-year deal. It still too high for the Bears, and a symbol of the team and the city had to depart, maybe to a division rival, which seems to happen quite often in the NFC North.
However, despite the Vikings’ need for an MLB and enough cap space to answer Urlacher’s demands, it isn’t exactly a move Vikings GM Rick Spielman is known to do. According to Kevin Seifert, Spielman has worked systematically to make the roster younger and to find long-term answers at positions of need rather than applying Band-Aid measures. Signing Urlacher would almost be contradictory to everything Spielman has done during his 15 months on the job, but it’s not so strange to sign an accomplished linebacker from a division rival, even if it is a little bit out of the box.
Eventually, there is a chance Urlacher might even return to the Chicago Bears, and take the $2 million offer, unless he prefers retiring than taking the insulting offer, according to him, his home team offered him in the first place. The market isn’t very favorable at the moment towards again, off-injury, middle linebackers who are only a 4-3 kind of guy.