Jul 28th 2008 1:30PM by Matt Snyder (author feed)
Filed under: Bears, NFC NorthThe Chicago Bears have been lambasted by everyone this offseason for their offensive personnel, specifically the air attack. QB wasn’t really addressed in the off-season, and letting Bernard Berrian walk to division rival Minnesota made the receiving corps the most maligned in the NFL.

Well, General Manager Jerry Angelo shed some light on the subject today with the inclusion of pro-bowler Lance Briggs:
”It would have been Berrian or Briggs,” Angelo said. ”We made a decision. We tried to do Bernard; didn’t work.”
Look, it’s pretty obvious the Bears aren’t being cheap this off-season in keeping their own guys after splurging to ensure Brian Urlacher, Devin Hester, and Tommie Harris are happy campers. Angelo also stated within the same piece that they believed Hester could replace Berrian’s production.

The real question here is, do you make sure your strength remains just as strong as ever while sacrificing an important cog to your weakness? The flip-side would be allowing one of the most important members of the strength walk while retaining an important part of the weakness.

With the external factors being as they are, I’d definitely keep Briggs over Berrian in a heartbeat. The QB situation isn’t resolved, so the possibility that Berrian would be wasted is real. The way the Bears are going to have to try and win football games this season is by grinding the clock with the running game and playing stellar defense. You need Briggs on the field alongside Urlacher to make sure this happens. Offensively, the threat of Hester going deep is enough to stretch the defense. He did catch two long TDs last year in limited duty.