Chicago Bears GM Phil Emery’s Spy Games Helped Land Jared Allen

It’s not easy keeping these types of deals under wraps.  When the Bears were trying to negotiate with Allen’s agent at the owner’s meetings last week, they had to go into stealth mode to keep the negotiations a secret.  With the Seattle Seahawks in hot pursuit and Orlando crawling with all sorts of media types, the Bears knew they had to go into stealth mode to keep this deal quiet:

"‘‘It was a little bit right out of a movie. It was very quiet,’’ Emery said. ‘‘Ken Harris [Allen’s agent] came to the hotel at the owners’ meeting [in Orlando]. We knew to have it remain silent we couldn’t have anybody see us meet or shake hand, so we met at at night away from the hotel. ‘‘But Ken had come to meet us and we were standing out facing the parking lot and John Clayton [the ESPN reporter] walked to Cliff Stein and shook his hand. Fortunately, John’s back was to Ken walking up to say ‘Hi’ to me. I grabbed Ken. I pulled him around and put him behind a post. And then John walked off. So John was surprised along with everybody else because no one saw Ken and we did that off campus.’’"

So that’s how super-stealth Phil goes about his business.