Summer's officially official now, and that means we actually get, like, three weeks away from the world of NFL news. Players and coaches are wrapping up veteran minicamps over the next week or so, and then everyone disappears to their tropical island of choice/Lake Tahoe for about a month before training camp begins.
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And while some players – vets especially – don't work particularly hard over the next month or so (can't really blame them), that's not the way it's going to work in Chicago, I guess. With Ben Johnson in charge, no one gets any PTO! (Kidding, kidding. I think?) Johnson had a message for Bears vets who weren't going to be around for the team's final round of OTAs, and it's very much the first Big Coach Cliche of his tenure in Chicago. The Bears have a head coach!
Ben Johnson's throwing out all the coach cliches heading into Bears training camp
To the players who won't be back for the final OTA, Johnson sent them off with this message about being prepared to return in July.
— Courtney Cronin (@CourtneyRCronin) June 5, 2025
"For us, training camp’s not a get-in-shape camp, it's show-up-in-shape camp so we can become a good football team." https://t.co/HMhF7YvfVj
"Just do a little 4-mile run before your ProAm tee time" is peak football coach lore. You're either getting or you're getting worse; you don't own success, you rent it – and rent's due every day. I hope they have what they need to sharpen their iron in the lab.
No one likes summer homework, but that's part of the job when you get paid millions of dollars to play football. I imagine most of the vets/literally every coach will still find time to go on some lux vacation sometime before the season starts. You just know that someone's throwing out the first pitch at a Friday Cubs game in the next few weeks and then hitting the playpen afterwards; all Johnson's asking is that maybe, just maybe, they do some pushups before they get on the yacht.