What a start to the offseason for our beloved Chicago Bears.

First, they decide to let Ron Rivera go. I can understand giving him the chance to find a head coaching job, but losing him to San Diego as a linebackers coach?

Rumors swirled for a little while about Lovie Smith going to Dallas or various other locations before the Bears finally sucked it up and paid him fair market value to stay in Chicago.

Things seemed to be settled once again with Lovie back in place, Jerry Angelo re-signed and nearly the entire Super Bowl roster coming back for another run next season. Then, the Bears decided to make two key moves that landed them in the situation they are in now. They franchised Lance Briggs and closed a deal to send Thomas Jones to the Jets.

So here’s the situation that has developed: Lance Briggs is absolutely furious at the Bears for keeping him off the free agent market and the Bears didn’t really get much in return for Jones after back-to-back excellent seasons.

Let’s start with the implications of the Briggs situation. Was franchising Briggs a good financial move for Chicago? Yes. Was it a good move overall? Let’s let Briggs answer this one. Here’s a quote from Mr. Briggs following the news that he had been franchised: “I don’t want to be there anymore. I won’t play for them, and I’ll do everything in my power to keep from playing there.” Great…

Briggs went on to say the Bears have a great bunch of players and he thinks they can do some good things but he believes that moving on is the only option for him.

Now that the Bears have franchised Briggs, his options are quite limited. If the Bears decide they want to keep him, he really can’t do anything about it unless he skips training camp and holds out for the season. If he does that, he will be hit with fines in the millions from the team and won’t receive his $7.2 million paycheck for the 2007-08 season.

So now the Bears are stuck. If they remove the franchise tag, Briggs is gone and they get nothing in return. If they keep it on him, he might be the worst thing to happen to a locker room since Terrell Owens entered middle school. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Now on to the Thomas Jones deal.

The team will send Jones and a second round pick to the Jets for … insert an awesome player or first round pick here, right? Nope. They are making the deal for the Jets’ second round pick and that’s it. The Bears will move Jones and their second round pick for a total of improvement of 26 spots on draft day. This would be a viable move if we were talking first round picks, but we’re not.

I’m trying to rationalize this deal and I just can’t seem to figure out how it makes sense. If it was Jones straight up for a second round pick, I understand that. It would give them a chance to add some more early-round talent to the team.

But the way this deal is now, I see no way the Jets aren’t getting a steal. Especially in a market where Jones should be the top running back available for trade. I don’t think the Bears had to rush into this deal. We could have gotten more somewhere else.

I’ll be very interested to see who this draft pick is that we acquire with the 37th overall selection. I bet when we look at it on paper and it ends up being Thomas Jones, along with a second round pick for offensive lineman Ben Grubbs or Tony Ugoh we will all look at this deal and wonder how it was ever going to be a good deal for Chicago.

Frank Vanderwall is a senior in Communications. He can be reached at [email protected].