Bears linebacker excels despite lack of attention

	Lance Briggs has 90 tackles on the season and is a key component of the NFL's top-ranked defense. Heinz Kluetmeier/SI
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Lance Briggs is one of the league's best linebackers, but when a player lines up next to Brian Urlacher, that player tends to do the bulk of his damage on the down-low. So it was a couple of weeks ago that Briggs and I could dine at Nine, a trendy Chicago steakhouse, without the Pro Bowl outside backer attracting all that much attention from the clientele.

Briggs, who's having another tremendous season for the league's stingiest scoring defense -- he forced a pair of fumbles, recovered one and had 13 tackles in the Bears' 17-13 loss to the Patriots last Sunday -- is one of the league's biggest bargains. That's about to change, however. Briggs, who contemplated a holdout before reporting this summer, is in the final year of the contract he signed after being picked in the third round of the 2003 draft.

As his close friend Urlacher says, "Briggs is going to get paid by somebody. I just hope it's us."

In the meantime, we were happy to pick up the dinner tab for a fellow Californian.

Silver: You come from Sacramento, yet you headed south to Arizona for college? What, the Sacto summers weren't hot enough for you?

Briggs: I went to Arizona because the coach at the time, Dick Tomey (now at San Jose State), convinced me to come play for him. He was a different cat, man. When he was recruiting me, he came to my house and lay down on the floor and talked to me while I sat in a chair. My parents and I were like, "Uh, OK." I always respected the fact that he was the only college coach who never promised me anything. He said, "What I can promise you is that if you can come in and outplay the guy on the field who's ahead of you, he's gonna sit and you're gonna play." That was all I needed to hear.

Silver: How disappointed were you on draft day?

Briggs: Oh, man, it was terrible, one of the longest days of my life. I was the 13th linebacker drafted, and I can name all 12 of the guys who went ahead of me. Some of them are out of the league already. So yeah, I use it as motivation.

Silver: Why do you think you didn't go higher?

Briggs: I have no one but myself to blame. On my pro day at Arizona I was exhausted and dehydrated. I had weighed in at 242 at the combine, and teams wanted me under 240. I tried to make that weight right before pro day, and I got dehydrated as a result. I could barely finish the workout. It was awful.