[CBFF] Bear Weather

[Tom Shannon]

Bear Weather
By Tom Shannon

One of the things that struck me about the workout on Monday was that Lovie
Smith had the players out practicing in the rain rather than moving them
into the Walter Payton Center.  Smith said:

"If it isn't lightning, we'll be outside working in the rain. The perfect
scenario is to get a day in like today when you get a chance to work on
catching the ball when it's wet and carrying the ball when it's wet. We feel
we're being as safe as we possibly can. But this is Chicago weather."

For many years the idea of "Bear weather" was a horrible myth.  The Bears
not only looked like everyone else in snow and rain, they often looked
worse.  The famous "Halloween Night Massacre" at the hands of the Green Bay
Packers comes immediately to mind as a good example.

But the late season match up against the Atlanta Falcons last year showed
how much of an advantage being able to play under adverse conditions can be
for the Bears.  Anyone who saw Michael Vick huddled on the bench underneath
that parka understood that the game, which was played in subzero
temperatures, was over before it began.  As much as anything, the ability to
play in unbearable weather is lies in a state of mind.  Vick, along with
most of his teammates, was much more interested in getting off the field as
quickly as possible than he was in winning the contest.

My personal opinion is the concept of Bear weather became a fallacy when the
team started practicing indoors.  Doing this has many, many advantages, the
added safety to players that are already playing hurt not the least among
them.  But if the Bears are going to return to the idea that playing under
adverse conditions is to their advantage, they have to actually play under
those conditions.  Doing so once or twice a season simply isn't going to cut
it.

That's why I was so glad to see Smith practicing the team in the rain.
True, it probably had something to do with the team's soft performance in
Friday's preseason contest and their continued bad play in Sunday's
practice.  But I can't help but hope that Smith continues to have the team
practice outside under these conditions at least part of the time.  Such a
policy could signal the disappearance of intolerable game conditions and the
return of true Bear weather of the type the team's fans haven't seen for
quite a long time.


Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of
witnesses.
            -- Margaret Millar