That makes everyone's job at Halas Hall a little easier, but that doesn't mean the work stops. Angelo was breaking down tape of the Big Ten in his office when he recently visited with the Sun-Times. He's already working on the 2010 draft. He always starts with the local conference, then does the Pac-10 before working his way to the rest.

Angelo was asked about the blockbuster trade that brought Cutler to the Bears from Denver and how the deal has reshaped his image as the leader of the NFL's cornerstone franchise, one that hasn't been known for such bold moves. The interesting thing is you no longer hear the Bears are a draft-driven organization.

Q. How did you prepare for the trade during the nearly five-week saga in Denver?

A. We had plenty of time to think about it. Most of the league, if not all of the league, dismissed it as just an acrimonious beginning and they dropped the ball, talking about Denver and how it initially played out with [Matt] Cassel. But those things happen sometimes. Players get their egos bruised, new coaches come in and want to create their identity. But we never really thought it would get to the level it got to, where they would actively be working to trade him.

Q. How careful were you not to create the same situation Denver had with a quarterback who was upset about talk of a potential trade?

A. Very sensitive. That's one of the delicate points when you go into these. You don't want to create any bad karma within the building with players, not just Kyle [Orton], but the locker room, too. The players like Kyle. They voted him team captain. I was very sensitive to that. We let that be known to Denver, because they were in a situation like that, that we don't want this to drag on.

Q. Broncos owner Pat Bowlen announced March 31 that Cutler would be traded. Did you make your initial offer the next day?

A. Yes. We wanted to collect our thoughts. I wanted to make sure, knowing that there were going to be a good handful of teams, that we got their attention. The one thing we wanted to do was send a loud message to them that we're very serious about this, and we did get their attention.

Q. On the day the trade happened, April 2, there was a long stall in communication with the Broncos. What did you do when you were nervous?

A. There was a lot of anxiety given the magnitude of this deal. You keep working; you just go on business as usual. You can't control someone else's thinking. We made it clear to them that we were in it. I didn't know where we were in the pecking order. They were real good about keeping us informed to a degree where we knew that they hadn't forgotten us.

Our whole theme, which we communicated to them, was, 'What is it going to take for the Bears to win it?' I didn't give them a deadline, but I told them we need to know something fairly soon. Then they came back and told us they would get back with us in a few hours. A few hours led to a few more hours, but at least there was some communication. I felt we were still in it because they hadn't told us no. From there, they did call us and said, 'OK, here is what it's going to take from you.' That's when we negotiated.

Q. Sports Illustrated's Peter King wrote on April 6, ''Angelo rebuilt his battered, way-too-conservative GM image, and Chicago got a potentially great long-term quarterback.'' Has your image changed?

A. I don't know. I thought that was a little strong. 'Battered' is a little strong.

Q. Did people previously see you as being too conservative?

A. How do you define conservative? What we have always done here, the art of this business, every team has decisions to make every year, and there are always going to be some big decisions. That is very difficult to do, and what you don't want to do is miss big. So we have a very pragmatic approach to making decisions. We don't do things knee-jerk; we don't do things based on perception. We do things based on how it's going to impact us now and going forward. Nothing great probably looked good early.

So being conservative in this business, in a lot of ways, is a good thing. Because the one thing you don't want to do is make decisions based on emotion because when you do that, then you become desperate. There are a lot of casualties in this business from desperate thinking. If conservatism isn't going out there and doing some things where people say, 'Wow, what was he thinking?' then, yes, we are conservative, and I don't have any problem with that.

We built this team many different ways. We've done it through the draft; we've done it through the free-agency system; we've done it through trades. When you look at our roster over my tenure here, we probably have done it every which way you can do it. There are some teams that really abide by the draft. There are some teams that really look at Free Agency. We have had a good mesh of both. We've had a pretty good track record in terms of our free-agent signings, and that's not easy to do. There's probably as big of a bust ratio when you bring in free agents as the draft. We've done a pretty good job of meshing the two, and we've always looked at every avenue.