Bears Tone It Down a Bit

One-day suspension of OTAs for too much contact a minor transgression say Bears and Matt Eberflus, after they corrected the excessive hitting.

Bears players treated their unplanned day off because of a team violation for being too physical at OTAs accordingly.

"I got to play 18 holes of golf," tight end and player-union rep Cole Kmet said.

The Bears recognized their penalty from the league for too much physical play in non-contact drills for what it was worth.

"We respect the NFL and the NFLPA for getting together and what they concluded on was that we had a few plays early on in the OTA process, very early on, and they took away an OTA on Tuesday," coach Matt Eberflus said. "We found out late Monday evening and that is when we notified the media as well as the players that we weren’t coming in on Tuesday.

"We resumed practice today on Wednesday for an OTA, that was good. The league did not hand out fines to myself or to the organization for that particular violation."

Of course there was a little more to it than missing one OTA practice out of the nine they have. They've altered how they were practicing to be in accordance with the rules of the collective bargaining agreement.

"What we've done over the process of these OTAs, as I've said, maybe it was after OTA-2, that we've learned how to practice Bears against Bears and still run full speed and be able to practice in this time, Phase 3 time, where there's no collisions or contacts and all of those things," Eberflus said. "And we've improved on that severely and did a nice job and the players have done a nice job."

There had been an initial warning to the team so it did not come as a total surprise.

"We were kind of aware of it a little bit that they were looking into it but didn't think anything of it," Kmet said. "Then when we heard, we just kind of took it for what it was." What they saw it as being was a case where they weren't quite familiar with how the coaching staff wanted practice conducted.

"It's just being under control," Eberflus said. "It's like I said, be quick but not in a hurry. Body control. Being able to stay on your feet and knowing the tempo and those guys are doing a good job with that."

Last year three teams were penalized and fined. Without a fine involved and after being docked only one day of work, it's apparent the league and union didn't see the Bears doing very much wrong.

Players called it a matter of too many times where a player was knocked to the ground.

"You've got to look at our situation right now," Kmet said. "We've got a lot of young guys, right? New coach, new everything. Guys are coming in to prove themselves, including me. So when someone says you're going 100 percent, you're going 100 percent.

"I'm not going to ease up, first of all because I don't want to get hurt. That's how you get hurt; you're not going 100 percent. And guys want to show what they've got. When you run that line … we don't have as many vets as we've had in years past. Naturally, we're a younger team. It's kind of just where we're at right now."

Eberflus and coaches talked to players.

"I think what you do as a coach you know during this time of year when you see something that is what you say is a little bit over the time, you bring it to their attention, you take it to the team meeting, which I did, and you talk to them about and say, 'hey, this is what we need to correct, this is what we need to do,'" Eberflus said. "And the guys have steadily improved on that process and are doing a really nice job at this point."

Losing one OTA in the grand scheme means little. The Bears had an extra minicamp tossed to them because they have a new coaching staff anyway. During the height of the pandemic, the Matt Nagy coaching regime was canceling OTA practices in bulk to give players a week away after the union had urged players to stay away.

Other teams in the league had done the same or canceled even more practices. All of which begs the question, what good are the offseason practices known as organized team activities, anyway?

"It's really good for the timing in the passing game and all those things," Kmet said. "I mean, I'll be real, I don't think the run game is as real. You put pads on and someone gets hit in the mouth and hit in the chin and gets put to the ground, that's real football. You can't do that right now.

"The run game aspect, maybe not so much, but I think in the passing game you can get really good timing down and things like that and see how guys are moving and get timing with the quarterback. I think in that regard, for me, that's huge."

Maybe not as huge as getting that day off Tuesday so Kmet could shoot 86 at Royal Melbourne.