If you don't know already I was picked up as an undrafted free agent by the "Da Bears" so I will be making Chicago my new home for a while. Hopefully a long while.
I am back at home now. I woke not to long ago at about 1pm. Decided to sleep in a bit. I was bit tired from the weekend.
Everything in my opinion went well. It was overwhelmed at first and I had a some nervousness when I first got there. I believe all of us (Draftpicks, free agents, and tryout guys) had some butterflies about the whole thing. On the first day they told us to slow down and stop going so hard when we went against each other. They didn't want us hurting one another and also just wanted us to focus on what we were doing less then how hard we would do it.
I like the D line coach. He's a real country fellow from Mississippi. It was given hard time at first for being so quite the first couple of days. I was just trying to feel everything and get comfortable with how everything works. No it was because I was mumbling.
The weather up there was off and on. The first day of practice was inside there the indoor facility (
http://www.kalwall.com/chicago.htm) because of the heavy rain, but warm temperatures. The next day was about 40 degrees, cold, wet, and raining. But it was still football kind of weather. So I fought through cramps and stiffness to get through practice. Lots of Gatorade and extra electrolyte packets.
On the first and second day they did a thorough physical with a chest X-ray, an eye examination, breathing test, a standard Dr.'s physical, EKG, dental, orthopedists exam, hearing test (like the one you do when your 6), and then they take your blood and urine and test that for anything on top of looking at your medical history. After that they take our weight and body fat in the Bod Pod (
http://www.wheaton.edu/ahs/Facilities/BodPod.png). It's really hard to do the Bod Pod right the first time so it took me like 5 times to get it right. So they don't miss a beat.
The food was great. Much like cafeteria style but nonetheless great stuff.
Even in these first four days they were cramming a lot of information into our heads about everything from how to talk to media to the proper way to conduct ourselves in different places to how to club and rip on a pop up bag.
Yesterday we had chapel with Ray McElroy, the team chaplain. He's real passionate man who has used his platform as an NFL player to reach out many youth across the states (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGlVqHCrw5o).
Overall it was a very intense weekend and they didn't waist one minute of our time with practice and all the different meetings we had. But I look foward to continue training next week on the 16th when the whole team reports for training. So there will be more to come.
