February is our shortest month, though you couldn`t prove it by Jerry Vainisi`s frayed edges and raspy voice. On the 26th of January, these Bears that he generally manages roared to victory in Super Bowl XX, and the city of Chicago was even higher than the New England Patriots.
However, comma, one afternoon later came the controversial parade that stood still, and there hasn`t been one decently dull day since. Monday was the rule instead of the exception. Richard Dent stepped into the team`s executive offices at Halas Hall, accompanied by agent Everett Glenn, who also dropped by Lake Forest, which is roughly halfway between his home in Oakland and his latest hitching post–East Rutherford, N.J., home of the New Jersey Generals. ”Nothing, no progress,” Vainisi reported Monday evening. ”We`re still a long ways apart. A couple hundred thousand dollars a year apart, and we`ve been talking since the start of the season. We`ll keep meeting. January was more fun than February, I`ll tell you that.”
What has befallen and bedeviled the champions since their New Orleans victory tour is not pretty, or encouraging. Leslie Frazier, a quality cornerback, and Dennis McKinnon, a clutch wide receiver, have taken to the knife, their prognoses ominous. They probably won`t play next season; they might not play again. Doctors cast their opinions, and they vary, save for this–it is too soon to tell, but not too soon to be concerned.
And when it hasn`t been arthroscopy, it`s been acrimony. The coaching staff has been plucked and pillaged, first Buddy Ryan, the defensive genius, then Ted Plumb, then Dale Haupt.
From top to bottom, the current Bears were proponents of free speech. That did not change when the Philadelphia Eagles swooped in, hiring at will. Ryan and head coach Mike Ditka didn`t simply throw long-distance rocks, they threw boulders. Peace has yet to be restored, the pieces remain.
”I`m disappointed at some of the things that were said, and I`ve talked to Mike about it,” admitted Vainisi. ”It`s obvious he and Buddy had their differences, but they were handled while he was here. Why let it turn into what it did after Ryan leaves? The departures from the coaching staff, you expect that. That`s the price of success. It happens to all teams that win. Look at Dallas.
”The injuries, to Frazier and McKinnon, were hard. We lost two starters last year in Al Harris and Todd Bell and won despite it. Now we`ve lost two more. That`s four. Can we continue to erode that base and still win?
”Have we come back to the league in just one month since the Super Bowl? I don`t know. We have the college draft still ahead, even though it`s apparently thin at corners and wide receivers. We have time. And we have a lot of good people still left. A lot.”
Dent surely is among them, and his contract affair is a convoluted one, not given to great moments in communication or logic. Once upon a time, the Bears could have had him for a relatively inexpensive price–once upon a time being before they went 18-1 and won a Super Bowl, at which he punctuated a sack dance of a season with the ultimate exclamation point, most valuable player.
As early as October`s game in San Francisco, the Bears` brass thought it had a deal. As recently as last week, the Bears` brass thought the same thing, though terms obviously had been revised upward. Management paid for the wait, which would have been acceptable had the wait indeed ended, had the case been closed.
”Last Friday, I`m in Lake Forest, at our offices, expecting to see Dent or Glenn or both,” Vainisi said. ”Nothing. Then I get a call from someone in New York, claiming that the New Jersey Generals of the other league had a press conference set up to announce they had entered negotiations to obtain Dent. Am I surprised? No, I`m shocked.
”A couple Tuesdays ago, the 11th, I drove Glenn to the airport here. I felt we were very close, although I admit I`ve felt that before. In the next few days, though, I heard from three or four other agents that Glenn was spreading the dollar figure around like it was pretty well established. One agent even told me that Glenn told him it was a deal.
”I phoned him the next Monday, the 17th, and asked him if he`d talked to Richard. Glenn said no, Dent was on his way to Florida for something. I thought it was pretty strange, all that time elapsed and he still hadn`t talked to his client. At least, he said he hadn`t. Then he told me, `I`ve still got to sell this to Richard.` That`s when I got upset. At the kind of money we were talking, he didn`t have to do any selling.
”It was a matter of how Glenn presented it. If he wanted to try and mess around for a few extra thousand dollars, which I told him weren`t there anyway because I`d gone as far as I could go already. I told Glenn that if Dent was going to be unhappy after signing a contract that would put him right up there with McMahon, Payton and Hampton on our payroll, then I`d advise against him signing it. I don`t want him coming to training camp pouting at those prices. If Dent`s going to pout, let him pout at $99,000.”
The Generals of the fading United States Football League considered capitalizing on this discrepancy by welcoming Glenn and Dent to a warm-up, hurry-up bash last Friday. Only Glenn showed, only to relate that his All-Pro defensive end owes the Bears an option year. The Generals blanched; their clumsy league needs a present before a future. Besides, the USFL need not endanger its chances of winning a huge lawsuit against the establishment by latching onto National Football League properties.
Meanwhile, back at Lake Forest, it`s the Bears vs. Dent, underpaid and underwhelmed by their offers.
”It`s hardball, not only involving Richard`s agent, but Richard, too,”
Vainisi said. ”They`re talking about signing him now, thereby avoiding the risk of the players striking over free agency in 1987, in which case we`d get nothing for him if we didn`t sign him and he just played next year for us at a 10 percent raise. We`re perfectly willing to take that gamble.”
Uh, Jerry, Jim McMahon keeps calling you cheap.
”Don`t get me started on that,” said Vainisi. ”Safe to say, like I mentioned, January was a better month for us than February.”
By the way, Buddy Ryan comes to town Wednesday.
