The Bears defense is without question better when S Mike Brown is on the field, it is just a matter of keeping him there.  Brown has missed significant time each of the last 4 years.

The Bears again hope to rely on him, but this time if he goes down the Bears won't take quite the hit in the wallet.

The Bears and Mike Brown have agreed in terms to a restructured deal .

...have agreed to a restructuring of his contract for the final year of the $17 million, five-year extension he agreed to in 2003.

Brown can still earn the $2.44 million he was on the books for, but he has to play to pocket it.

His base pay has been reduced to $950,000 with the remaining $1.49 million now in the form of a not-likely-to-be-earned incentive. It’s considered a NLTBE incentive because whatever the play-time trigger is to earn him the pay (that percentage of snaps is not known) is greater than he had last season. Obviously, that doesn’t take much considering Brown went out in the season opener at San Diego with a torn ACL in his left knee. Inside the Bears isn’t going to venture a guess as to what the clause is, but suffice to say it’s more than 1/16 of the snaps.

 

There is a split in Brown's contract too. If he's injured prior to the start of the season and forced onto injured reserve, the club can reduce his base pay to $320,000. Getting through training camp and the preseason has not been his problem, although he did sit out the 2006 preseason.