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Matt Eberflus' Bears Boot Camp

It's been promised and the Bears coach has delivered with constant running and plays in scrimmage coming off in rapid-fire succession, as players finish practices totally spent.

Matt Nagy promised it. Matt Eberflus has delivered.

The callus effect from training camp is something Nagy had spoken about but none of those Bears camps nor any under John Fox or Marc Trestman resemble what's going on at Halas Hall now.

There is running constantly in plays and drills, between fields and plays. Players are exhausted and hot.

And there is real open competition with preseason only a week away. It's wide open at many spots, particularly the offensive line, wide receiver and cornerback.

"Just in general, when he talked about the scheme and what we do, like the H.I.T.S. principle, he said, 'It's gonna be the hardest thing you've ever done,' " linebacker Nicholas Morrow said. "And he's not joking. Just football-wise, right. Obviously football."

Morrow called Eberflus a man of his word.

"He's keeping his promise, that's for one, and then two, he wants to make it hard enough that when you get to the game it is not as hard or maybe you've had that intensity before then you can adapt to it," Morrow said.

Eberflus had said come with track shoes on. They're wearing out the soles and may need new ones.

"Well, I'll just say this: If you want to be a good football team, you have to have mental and physical stamina," Eberflus said. "And to build that callus, to build that stamina, you have to go through hard, and you can't do it by going through soft.

"That's just what our practices do. So the tempo which we practice, how we execute with speed, and what we're asking in the standards that we're asking our players to do, that builds that mental and physical stamina."

The players aren't griping. When your job is on the line every day, griping really isn't a consideration.

Morrow described his reaction to the difficult work as "Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm not afraid of it."

It's just the first year, but if players think they'll skate away in future years, guess again.

"I think you have to do it every year," Eberflus said. "Every year you come in, you have to build that mental and physical stamina. You do. You've gotta reset it and it's gotta be because your team changes every year. You get new free agents, you get new rookies.

"It's a big flip-over every year. Not as big as this year, but it will be new every single year. We've got to re-teach it and redo it."

Compounding all of this is the uncertainty involved with job competition.

Most jobs are usually decided by now and the demarcation between first and second team and second and third team is pretty well known. Eberflus doesn't do it this way.

They rotate players in and out at various levels. The offensive line remains unsettled with the preseason opener against Kansas City less than a week away.

"We have a lot of turnover," Eberflus said. "I think we have the most turnover on an NFL roster, I believe.

"So we've got a lot of new players, free agency and the draft. Everything's open."

Eventually it will narrow down and the practices will become less grueling. Not now.

Things must play out.

"If you let that happen, then it happens naturally and let it play out," Eberflus said. "You have situations like that. And I think a lot of times, coaches force the issue a little bit and anoint certain players—'Hey, he's the starter here. And he's the starter here.' And the other guy goes, 'Oh, I'm just a backup.'

"We don't want to put ceilings on guys. We want to be able to complete—leave it open, let 'em compete and a guy might rise up at the end to take the job. So we've got to let that happen."

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