Field of dreams hardly describes familiar situation for Bears in opener

When Matt Eberflus was coach, the park district brought in a strain of Bermuda grass that can flourish in colder weather at his behest. It seemed to solve what had always been an issue.

The field condition constantly popped up as an issue over the years until the Bermuda grass was installed in 2022. In fact, in August of 2022 former NFLPA president JC Tretter was on social media questioning how the NFL could let the Bears and Chiefs play a mid-August preseason game on a field with obvious problems.

Kicker Cairo Santos had described the turf as spotty before they switched it.

"But it's still a bad situation, a bad surface to kick on compared to other places," he said. "You're not super happy and thrilled to kick there every time. But you just overcome and deal with it."

The new turf seemed to solve this age-old problem.

The worst park district gaffe had come in August of 2011, when the family fest practice was canceled hours before it was to be held because sod hadn't been properly watered. It caused seams to show up with the edges dried out and curling. The Bears had to leave the embarrassing situation and return to Bourbonnais that night to practice at a lit high school field.

When they put in the new turf in 2022, they did it with only about the same amount of time before the regular season as they have for this year's opener and the turf did hold up. So, perhaps the new grass will be fine.

However, the Vikings, being an indoor team accustomed to perfect footing at home, are already eying this situation with suspicion. Coach Kevin O'Connell was commenting on the playing surface at Soldier Field.

"This is professional football so our anticipation is the surface is going to be good enough to play on," he told Paul Allen on KFAN-FM 100.3. "But I would say this, at some point, the guys in purple and white aren't going to be the only ones playing on the surface so we've gotta do our best to establish, through a lot of different people, once we've arrived, once we've had a chance to step foot, gotta have our players prepared to play on whatever the surface is.

"And truly, Monday Night Football, NFC North, if they want to clear out some space in the parking lot, we can play out there too. At this point, I would say that (turf) is not incredibly high on my priority list."

In other words, they'll bring lots of different types of shoes.

According to Minnesota Vikings On SI's Joe Nelson, O'Connell also brought up Lambeau Field in this discussion.

"We've seen at another location here in the NFC North that happens to have grass and a unique climate, we've seen that surface play a major role before," O'Connell said. "We want to make sure that we're doing our part to prepare our players.

"It's something I will talk about with the guys. We'll have the equipment available and we'll go play football."

The park district has long been accused by the Bears of not having their best interests in mind regarding the city-owned stadium, which was built in 2003 within the outer wall of the original stadium that was opened in 1924.

The Bears are currently in the process of getting their stadium project moving again in Arlington Heights.

Unnecessary situations like this one at Soldier Field can't make the new stadium construction happen fast enough. They need the state legislature finally to get around to passing legislation required to trigger the process.

When it’s done, the Bears have to run as fast as they can to the safety of the suburbs.

The park district can have all the concerts and soccer matches they want then at Soldier Field.