On Monday nights, football stops.
The evening after the Bears play their regular-season games, coach Matt Nagy demands that his coaching staff pause its film study and game-planning for one hour. At 5 p.m., coaches’ family members stream into Halas Hall and onto the observation deck overlooking the practice field.
Dinner — pizza and Buffalo wings — gets delivered.
The families get to know each other. Kids play on the field and their fathers join in — an important, albeit short, respite from the all-consuming regular season.
Welcome to Family Night.
“We tell coaches to shut everything down and go be a dad,” Nagy said.