Chicago Bears' Spacious Home Ideal for a COVID-19 Training Camp

Some teams might have problems coping with the league's COVID-19 social distancing mandates for their upcoming training camps but the Bears have an ace in the hole with Halas Hall

Sometimes it pays not to be thrifty.

At one time in the ancient past many a Bears fan accused the organization of being cheap, but if they ever went inside Halas Hall now they'd never utter another syllable about this.

When the McCaskey family remodeled a fairly large 22-year-old facility last year, they spared little expense.

The facility was doubled in size when they added almost 200,000 square feet in an expansion two years ago costing $100 million.

Moving around in the Bears' locker room now almost requires a golf cart, it's so big.

Reporters frequently are running to get across to the other side in order to be involved in an interview scrum around a player and arrive out of breath. Only part of the reason is most of them are out of shape. There's just too much room to cover.

Now the NFL has set forth a list of COVID-19 protocols and they are forcing teams to reconfigure locker rooms to permit social distance between each player.

Coach Matt Nagy isn't sure how all of this can work with 90 players on a roster, but they'll make the attempt whether it's locker room restrictions or meeting sizes.

"Here's what I'll say, is this is where you've got to get creative," Nagy said. "And we'll do that. We've already thought of a lot of different things." 

It would be impossible for any team without re-assigning lockers and either bringing in spare, portable lockers to put into the middle of the locker room or by using an auxiliary locker room.

When teams have 90 players in training camp, they usually need to have an auxiliary locker area.

The Bears are fortunate on two fronts. The new locker room the McCaskey's built could easily handle many lockers in the middle without cramping any players. It's possible they could fit all the veterans in there and still skip every other locker.

They also have used the basement of Halas Hall for years for the rookies and it's a spacious area.

The provisions also encourage virtual meetings and forbid in-person meetings of more than 20. Under current Illinois COVID-19 law, it's possible they may not even be allowed to have 10 people in a meeting unless there is improvement.

The memo also limits strength and conditioning session in weight rooms to 15 at a time, although this seems rather wasteful for the Bears because their weight room area is so spacious, with so many work areas, they could easily fit far more than this and maintain social distance.

It goes without saying the McCaskeys never thought about the possibility they would need this space for a reason like a pandemic. No one could have thought this. 

Creativity is still going to be needed. Coaches and players will still need to adapt, whether it's smaller meetings in some cases, or staggered scheduling.

"It's going to be totally different," Nagy said.

It's going to be a little easier for the Bears, though, with a facility capable of handling such drastic change.

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