The Chicago Bears kicked off training camp July 30 and held their first padded practice of the year August 1.
NFL teams are not allowed to conduct fully padded practices until training camp begins, and head coach John Fox said he is excited to evaluate his players with pads on, according to Jeff Dickerson of ESPN.com:
Well, I think you know some of this stuff is very hard to duplicate, you know, padded football without pads. So you know half that stuff, some of the flare-ups you see is because they’re getting tired of playing football that way [without pads].