Bears’ first padded practice ‘does feel like football again’

Darion Clark, the former USC basketball player whom the Bears signed to a free agent deal this offseason, walked down the path that winds from Halas Hall to the team’s backfields Monday morning. At 8:47, he became the first Bears player to step on the grass for their first padded practice of training camp — and first serious practice of any kind since Dec 27.

About 20 minutes later, he was joined by, among others, Mitch Trubisky and Nick Foles, two quarterbacks whose play will define the Bears season. Presuming, in the time of coronavirus, that there is a season.

Eventually, music echoed off the nearby trees. Players stretched and clapped and thumped each other. Eventually, they even tackled each other in drills.

It was normal. And absolutely bizarre.

The Bears’ first padded practice came only 27 days before their season opener against the Lions — and five months after all of American society was told not to touch their fellow man, much less wrestle him to the ground.

“It feels regular to me,” defensive tackle Bilal Nichols said. “Ball is ball. When we get out there, we are going full speed, 100 mph. We’re here to play ball. Nothing feels different to me. It feels like a normal practice.”

It was not a normal practice.

Players were careful to drink from plastic water bottles with their names on them.

Every assistant coach wore a mask. Players didn’t — nor did it seem that they wore the newly approved clear plastic shield over their facemask, either. But they’re required to don a face covering any time they’re indoors on the Halas Hall campus.

Head coach Matt Nagy wears his mask when he’s alone in his office — and even sometimes at home with his four boys. He wants it to feel normal.

“Just risk mitigation,” Nagy said. “That’s proven that helps the best in spreading it and containing it. … It’s also been proven that it’s not as contagious when you’re outside. So we can’t make the players wear their masks when they’re outside in practice but we can with the coaches. So that’s just what we’re doing. We’ve had no pushback with that.”

Nagy has preached safety as though it were a game plan since the first rookie reported for training camp three weeks ago. Monday, he said the measures were “becoming normal.” As such, he said, players need to make sure they stay vigilant.

‘Before we got here, they told us a lot of things were going to be different,” Pro Bowl safety Eddie Jackson said. “So right now, we’re used to it. We’re in the third week of it? So everything is just going well. It’s probably more normal now.”

Just to be able to practice, every member of the Bears’ 80-man roster must take a daily coronavirus test inside a mobile laboratory parked at Halas Hall. To enter the building, they must get their temperature taken at the front door.

Inside, they wear masks, pick up individually packaged food at the cafeteria and hang out with their lockers spaced farther apart than usual. Their meetings either take place on Zoom or inside the cavernous Walter Payton Center, the team’s practice dome.

It’s not the same as it was last year. Nothing is.

But, for 90 minutes, it felt familiar.

“For all the guys, that have a real passion for football or a real love for football and have been doing this their entire lives, this whole [coronavirus] situation has put us out of whack,” defensive lineman Akiem Hicks said. “Coming back to football has given us a sense of regularity.

“It does feel good to be back out there. And it does feel like football again.”