No Bears-Broncos Practices by Order of the Commissioner
The Bears and Denver Broncos won't be getting together for those joint practices after all.
This was covered by the commissioner's memo which has reportedly been sent to teams saying they should hold training camps at their home facilities.
As per a tweet by Denver Broncos reporter Mike Klis, the practices in the second week of preseason are off. The game for Aug. 22 is still scheduled, however.
The thought of going to Denver for a game in the middle of the COVID-19 Epidemic is difficult enough but then going early and practicing is just simply inviting trouble.
The Bears will be home at Halas Hall for camp, provided they can get Gov. J.B. Pritzker to lighten up his restrictions in his recovery plan.
Their minicamp at Halas Hall is still set for June 22-24 but this is a very tentative situation at the moment. They really haven't qualified in this area of Illinois to hold practices with this many people involved in team non-contact work.
When teams are practicing at minicamp and OTAs they are not in pads but they do run plays and linemen are pushing on each other while receivers and defenders are in close contact.
Still unaddressed by the Bears is whether the idea of fans coming to Halas Hall for the regularly scheduled training camp is nixed.
At the announcement this winter of camp moving to Halas Hall from Bourbonnais, Bears CEO Ted Phillips out out a statement saying they hoped to hold camp while "maintaining a public component." Bears media relations had issued a release saying "... Additional details regarding the 2020 training camp schedule and free public tickets will be available later this spring."
