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The Denver Broncos on Monday re-signed unrestricted free-agent linebacker Patrick Chukwurah to a one-year contract, Head Coach Mike Shanahan announced. As per club policy, financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Chukwurah (6-foot-1, 250 pounds) is entering his sixth NFL season and fourth year with the Broncos, who signed him as a free agent on Dec. 24, 2003. Selected by Minnesota in the fifth round (157th overall) of the 2001 NFL Draft, Chukwurah played his first two professional seasons with the Vikings and spent the 2003 training camp with Houston.
Chukwurah has played 55 career regular-season games (5 starts) and recorded 29 tackles (16 solo), 3.5 sacks (37 yds.), two pass breakups and three forced fumbles. The 27-year-old also owns 34 career special-teams tackles in regular-season play and has appeared in three playoff contests.
In 2005, Chukwurah saw action in 14 regular-season games (0 starts) for the Broncos and posted two tackles (1 solo) on defense while ranking sixth on the club with seven special-teams tackles. Chukwurah was a regular on a Denver special-teams unit that helped the team tie for the NFL lead in fewest opponent drives started past the 50-yard line (10).
CHICAGO SPORTS
Monday, September 4, 2006
If Lovie Smith's Chicago Bears don't make the playoffs, we shouldn't have to hear excuses, explanations, alibis or justifications. We simply should hear the door slam behind the ex-coach as he leaves Chicago for good.
Pro football is a results business, and a postseason berth is the minimum acceptable result for the 2006 Bears.
Before anybody accuses me of being out to get Smith, there's a flip side to this, too: If Lovie leads his lads to another division championship and they advance to the NFC title game, he should get a long, lucrative contract extension - no matter how painful it will be for the McCaskeys to sign those checks.
And if Smith wins the Super Bowl, well, let's just say statues have been commissioned around these parts for far less worthy deeds.
Lovie is neither the NFL's best coach nor its worst. He's neither the oldest nor the youngest, the chattiest nor the quietest, the skinniest nor the chubbiest, the most respected nor the most overlooked, the winningest nor the losingest, the most experienced nor the most green.
The one thing we definitely know about him is that he's the league's lowest-paid head coach.
Smith, who has two years remaining on the four-year, approximately $5 million contract he signed when hired in 2004, is being forced to wait for a raise and an extension by those who hold the combination to the Halas Hall vault.
I'm not sure whether GM Jerry Angelo has more to do with that fact than CEO Ted Phillips does - or if the decision to make Lovie succeed for his supper comes from the McCaskeys, who didn't dig paying Dave Wannstedt and Dick Jauron long after those coaches were extended (and subsequently fired).
Regardless, penurious Papa Bear Halas would be proud. For what it's worth, I also applaud the refreshing perform-before-pay edict.
With every starter back from an 11-5 team, quality quarterback depth for the first time in recent Bears history and a weak schedule that includes six games within the NFC Nothing Division, Smith will have every opportunity to show whether he merits huge future paydays and a lengthy stay in Bear Country or a farewell handshake and lovely parting gifts.
His first chance to prove his worth comes Sunday in Green Bay, where the Bears open against a lost-looking Packers team coming off a 4-12 campaign. That's right: The season hasn't started yet, and Lovie already is staring at his first must-win situation.
Smith will face some interesting challenges. In several games, he likely will have to choose between sticking with struggling QB Rex Grossman or turning to Brian Griese. The sophomoric tailback situation, in which Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson vie for love from coaches and fellow players, could be a season-long soap opera.
Famously patient Bears fans are getting antsy for a winner and have resorted to booing the home team. And then there's a defense that straddles the confidence/cockiness line, sometimes not professionally.
Still, Lovie's team is by far the division's best on paper.
Each of the NFC Nothing's other three entries - Green Bay, Detroit, Minnesota - features a first-year head coach trying to save a sinking (or, in the Vikings' case, salacious) ship.
Based on opponents' 2005 records, the Bears have the league's "easiest" schedule.
I've never liked using the previous year's winning percentage as a schedule-strength indicator because supposedly broken teams mend quickly and reputedly good teams fail mysteriously in the parity-infused NFL. A better indicator is number of games against teams with first-time-ever head coaches, and the Bears play more than half their schedule - 9 of 16 - against such clubs.
Why is it such an enormous edge? Coaching changes usually happen because teams were bad, old, hurting, desperate or all of the above. And so much goes into rebuilding a franchise that it almost always takes more than one year for a new regime to accomplish anything.
Among those who lost big as rookie coaches: Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick, Chuck Noll, Mike Ditka, Bill Walsh, Don Coryell, Tony Dungy, Weeb Ewbank, Bud Grant, Jimmy Johnson, Marv Levy, Mike Shanahan, Dick Vermeil - and on and on through a list of greats.
At least nine times this season, Lovie Smith will have a significant advantage in coaching experience as well as on-field talent at his disposal.
His team had better be plenty far along or he won't see a fourth year. Not if results matter at all, anyway.
Mike Nadel is the Chicago sports columnist for Copley News Service. Write to him c/o Journal Star sports, 1 News Plaza, Peoria, IL 61643 or e-mail to mikenadelsbcglobal.
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