Bears bag Brandon Lloyd

The Chicago Bears were allegedly $32 million under the salary cap heading into free agency. But the team hasn’t done much to use that spending cash.

“If money is the bottom line, I don’t want that player,” Bears GM Jerry Angelo said at the NFL Scouting Combine, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

And Angelo has spent the past two weeks proving that true. The Bears did re-sign stud linebacker Lance Briggs.  But beyond that, they traded quarterback Brian Griese and allowed wideout Bernard Berrian to join division rival Minnesota after having cut Muhsin Muhammad.

While both players were flawed they’re quite a bit better than those the journeymen team officials added to replace them. They didn’t even match the Baltimore Ravens offer of four years, $4.9 million for special teams pro-bowler Brendon Ayanbadejo.

Futhermore, they’ve taken Angelo’s comments further with the moves they’ve made to, ahem, fortify their wide receiver position. Their immediate answer to losing Berrian and Muhammad was bringing Marty Booker back. He’s a fine player and he might get them 50 receptions. But his average yards per catch has decreased dramatically each of the last two years.

Now, on Friday afternoon, they dug even deeper for a retread, grabbing off the scrap heap former 49er and Redskin Brandon Lloyd. Lloyd, a big-buck addition in Washington two years ago, has missed nine games the last two years. He contributed just 25 catches during that span. Even when he was good back in 2004 and 2005 he wasn’t THAT good, with 43 and 48 catches respectively and uninspiring yards-per-catch averages and touchdown numbers.

Granted, it’s a one-year contract and odds are he didn’t have to pay that much. But it’s going to be a long year in Chi-town if these are the best wideouts they plan to add to a running game still hampered by trading the wrong back a year ago.