Vikings' Kevin O'Connell reacts to questions over Soldier Field turf

Kevin O'Connell isn't too worried about the grass at Soldier Field being in tip-top shape for Monday night's season opener between the Vikings and Bears, but he is aware of Chicago's sloppy history and how field conditions have played a role in Minnesota games in the past.

Soldier Field, the aging home of the Bears, played host to five consecutive concerts over Labor Day weekend, culminating with System of a Down and Avenged Sevenfold performing both Sunday and Monday. The Lumineers were the main event Saturday, while My Chemical Romance headlined Friday and Oasis performed in front of 52,000 fans Thursday.

In all, there were five concerts in five days with more than 250,000 music lovers in attendance.

According to WGN-TV, crews will spend this week transforming Soldier Field by laying sod ahead of the Sept. 8 Bears-Vikings opener. How will field conditions be come Monday night? Last year, before the Bears' preseason opener against the Bengals, which came the week after Soldier Field hosted back-to-back Metallica concerts, the field conditions weren't great.

“I didn’t like it at all, really,” Bears left guard Teven Jenkins said, via the Chicago Sun-Times. “It was a little slippery in some parts, and then some parts were sticky.”

The issue before last year's preseason opener may have been due to the sod being laid less than a week before the game. Bears kicker Cairo Santo told reporters that the playing surface "was just a little loose" but he though the conditions would "be amazing by Week 1."

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In other words, Santo thought the fresh sod needed some time to reach ideal playing surface status. If that's true, then the Vikings would be wise to prepare for some less than perfect field conditions Monday night by wearing 7-stud cleats. Regardless, O'Connell doesn't sound worried.

"This is professional football so our anticipation is the surface is going to be good enough to play on. 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," O'Connell told KFAN-FM 100.3's Paul Allen on Tuesday.

"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 is not incredibly high on my priority list."

However, O'Connell did acknowledge that field conditions have been a pest in the past, and he was clearly hinting at Green Bay's Lambeau Field, where Vikings players were slipping like crazy in a loss to the Packers on New Year's Day during his first season as head coach.

"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. 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," O'Connell said.

It also rained before and during last year's Bears-Bengals preseason game, so the forecast could be key to determining the field conditions for Monday night's Week 1 showdown.

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