LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Bears general manager Jerry Angelo has said that he intends to create competition at the running back position this offseason, and that’s just fine with Cedric Benson.

“I’ve had it before,” Benson told reporters last week. “You all know the competition that goes on around here. It doesn’t matter to me. Maybe somebody else can get some criticism.”

Cedric Benson's 43-yard TD against Seattle was the longest run of his three-year NFL career.

Improving a stalled running game that ranked 32nd in the NFL in yards per carry and 30th in yards per game appears to be a top offseason priority for the Bears.

Benson rushed for 674 yards and 4 TDs on 196 attempts in 11 games before being lost for the season with a broken left ankle Nov. 25 in an overtime win over the Denver Broncos.

Although he averaged just 3.4 yards per carry and had only one run of more than 21 yards, the fourth overall pick in the 2005 draft believes that he deserves to be the Bears’ No. 1 back.

“I feel it’s established,” Benson said. “I don’t feel like I need to prove anything. I know everybody’s looking for the big season, and we were coming on strong at the end and still had quite a few more games where we would have had good numbers and ended with a good season.

“But I just got sidelined. So I don’t feel like there’s anything I have to prove. I think it’s just coming back and getting that big season.”

Benson’s three longest runs of the year came in his final two games. On his first two carries Nov. 18 in Seattle, he dashed 43 yards for a touchdown and then picked up 20 yards. A week later against the Broncos, he broke his ankle while being tackled on a 21-yard gain.

Prior to those long runs, Benson’s yards-per-carry average hovered around 3.0, which elicited a barrage of criticism from fans and media that continues to echo in his ears.

“I don’t think it’s fair, but if those questions are brought about, then so be it,” he said.

“Things were starting to turn around. I was taking most of the criticism that the team was getting throughout the year. I was finally answering or shutting a lot of that stuff up or making them look pretty silly for some of the things they said.”

Although the Bears cleared a path for Benson to succeed by anointing him the starter, the 5-11, 220-pounder understood that there were no guarantees.

“I knew nothing was going to be easy,” he said. “I knew nothing was going to be handed to me. I wasn’t going to go out there every game and there’d just be holes for me to run through and have field days every game. I knew it was going to be tough every week, but you’re just looking for that break and it was starting to break there at the end.”

Replacement Adrian Peterson finished the season with the same 3.4 yards-per-carry average as Benson, but that didn’t make the former Texas star feel any better.

“That’s no kind of vindication,” Benson said. “I wasn’t looking for any vindication. I didn’t need vindication. I don’t know who did need it. I didn’t need it. I knew the types of problems and issues we had on offense. We were all part of it.”

Benson insists that he didn’t come to training camp out of shape last summer and said that the knee injuries he’s suffered late in his first two seasons haven’t affected his conditioning.

“It’s funny; they all do come at the end of the season,” said Benson, who is confident that he'll make a full recovery from his latest injury. “But they never kept me from conditioning or training. I was over them not too long after the season ended.

“I didn’t come in this offseason out of shape or overweight or anything like that. I came in well in shape, in great football condition, ready to play.”