Unless you're a future Hall of Famer with lots of other options, don't be "insulted" by a low-ball offer

The Chicago Bears have parted ways with middle linebacker Brian Urlacher.

In his day Urlacher was a pretty darn good player -- a worthy successor to Bears MLBs Mike Singletary, Dick Butkus, and Bill George, all of whom are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Mr. Urlacher is likely to join them in due course.

However, like all of us, Urlacher has aged. He has lost a step. Injuries have sidelined him, and the cumulative effects of a long NFL career are impossible to overlook.

But Mr. Urlacher is not just a victim of time, but of timing: The Bears parted company with Lovie Smith after the end of last season and the new coaching staff owes Urlacher nothing but the respect due to any one-time great. To make matters worse, Urlacher's contract has expired. He is a free agent.

If Lovie Smith & Co. had been retained Urlacher would still have had to take a big pay cut to stay with the team. If he wants to play anywhere, he's going to have to take a mere fraction of the $7.5 million he made only last season. He and his agent knew that; they had to know that.

Nevertheless, Mr. Urlacher has made it known that he is "insulted" by the $2 million offer ($1 million guaranteed) made by the new regime in Halas Hall. It wasn't an offer, Urlacher snarled, it was an "ultimatum." Take it or leave it. So... he left. (Well, maybe he left -- the team says there was a mutual agreement to stop talking -- Urlacher says the Bears closed the door on him.)

Where he lands from here -- whether he can find work anywhere else -- is uncertain. If he gets a seemingly 'big' contract from anyone it's a safe bet that it would be incentive-laden, with the gaudy-sounding money coming at the end of the contract, after Mr. Urlacher is likely to be discarded by that successor team. Maybe he'll find a team willing to guarantee more than the Bears -- but don't bet the mortgage money on it.

But even if Mr. Urlacher finds large dollars on the free agent market, I don't think he should have been "insulted" by the reported $2 million offer. I'd guess that, however unenthused the agent may have been about the $2 million proposal, Mr. Urlacher's agent probably said something similar to his client when conveying the offer.

Establishing value, whether for a football player's contract or in a court case, is a difficult process, with both sides in the negotiation jockeying for advantage. But the offer of any amount (well, almost any amount) shows a willingness to successfully complete the negotiation. Mr. Urlacher may admit, on some level, that his skills are not what they once were, but he clearly does not think he has fallen as far as the Bears' reported offer would indicate. The Bears thought they could survive without Mr. Urlacher, but they were at least interested in trying to find a way to keep him on the roster.

But the Bears had other concerns besides the current value of Mr. Urlacher's skills: They have cap worries, other salaries to negotiate, money that must be set aside for draft picks. All of these figured into the number they pushed across the table to Mr. Urlacher and his agent.

And, of course, the Bears may very well have said, or at least intimated, that this $2 million offer was the best they could do and that they could not possibly budge off that figure. Something like this happens in almost every negotiation.

And sometimes it may even be true.

In negotiating a settlement in a court case, there is usually only one way to test the seriousness of the other side's position: Keep talking. (Mr. Urlacher said his agent tried to make a counter and was rebuffed.)

Mr. Urlacher may have other options. He can use the Bears' offer as a starting point in 'shopping' his services to other NFL teams. Of course, he might have been able to do that without cutting ties with the Bears. On the other hand, maybe the Bears' offer really was an ultimatum. Maybe Mr. Urlacher doesn't particularly care to play for the new Bears coaching staff; maybe he feels that, if he has to subject his skills to scrutiny by a new coaching staff somewhere, it might as well be anywhere.

It's difficult, especially in face-to-face negotiations, not to take offers and evaluations personally, sometimes deeply so. Strong emotions can cloud good judgment, however. This is why, in an age where full-blown litigation has become prohibitively expensive, many cases are resolved with the assistance of a mediator. A neutral who is dedicated only to helping the parties reach a mutually acceptable agreement can help negotiating parties get past the emotional surges that follow from "low-ball" offers or "outrageous" demands.