The Bears finalized their preseason schedule Thursday by making the opener with Miami a noon game on Sunday Aug. 10.
Chicagoalso hosts the Bills Aug. 17 at 7 p.m., and the tickets are on sale for those games. The best thing about the two preseason games is they're late enough in August that they don't coincide with Lollapalooza, which is the week prior to the opener with the Dolphins.
It means traffic problems should be no more than the usual pain in the rear and pain in the neck at Soldier Field for the preseason games.
The hotter ticket to have than those preseason games, without doubt, will be for the joint practices with the Dolphins and the Bills at Halas Hall prior to their preseason games.
The Bears don't put the training camp schedule out until later in the offseason and the limited free practice tickets usually are given out during the summer.
The reason these will be more interesting is both the intensity Ben Johnson is bringing to Bears offseason practices now, and the reputation his former team had for joint practices.
Let's just say they didn't seem to get along.
While on Dan Campbell's coaching staff, Johnson was a part of several joint practices with fights breaking out, including last year's infamous practices against the New York Giants. Those practices were so bad that one was cut short due to fighting. One independent account listed it at eight fights total in one practice.
The leaguefined both the Lions and the Giants $200,000 apiece and issued a statement warning teams against fighting at these practices.
The same two teams had relatively quiet joint practices the year before but there was evidence of fighting between the Lions and Jaguars in one of their two joint practices the that year.
In 2022, there were also incidents like this when the Colts and Lions practiced.
The Bears really haven't had a lot of incidents like this. They've been more known for water balloon fights at training camp.
They had a Bengals practice last year in a downpour when they should have moved it indoors and two Cincinnati players left with bad knee injuries, but not from a fight. The practices with Miami in 2022 had no real situations develop, but in 2023 there was some shoving at Colts camp when the Bears went there. By and large, they were a peace-loving team in past joint practices.
The Bears haven't had two joint practice sessions like this in one training camp, but Miami is having three of them this year. The Dolphins have one before each preseason game. The Dolphins did this last year, as well.
Having more than one is something Detroit likes doing and will again this year. as the Lions are one of the teams practicing against Miami and will also practice against another team.
It's easy to wonder if this two-joint practice approach will become a regular thing in Chicago now. It also would be no surprise if the attitude for chippy joint practices follows Johnson to Chicago from Detroit with Dan Campbell's influence, and if some of the intensity being displayed now at Bears OTAs will carry over to when the Bills and Dolphins are at Halas Hall.
In any case, those tickets will be much more fun than the preseason games, when starters often see little action and everything is fairly homegenized.
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