BroBible
Earlier this year, the Bears pulled off one of the most dramatic comebacks in the history of the NFL playoffs en route to beating the Packers in the Wild Card round. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson attended that game, but he admitted he didn’t stick around to watch the team vanquish their fiercest rival while trying to draw attention to traffic issues at the stadium they call home.
The Bears have found themselves dealing with major drama in the offseason. However, it has nothing to do with the players on the field but rather the one they’ve played at since 1971.
The franchise currently has a lease at Soldier Field that’s slated to expire in 2033, but all signs point to the team relocating before then amid a push to construct a new venue.
The location of that stadium is still up in the air, as the team has threatened to relocate to Hammond, Indiana if it does not receive a favorable deal to break ground on a plot in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights (a bill designed to facilitate that second plan died in the Illinois legislature at the start of the month).
The mayor of the city the Bears currently call home would obviously prefer to see them stay there as opposed to fleeing across state lines, but he shot himself in the foot while discussing the issues with their current setup.
Some people would tell you that no “true” fan would willingly leave a game early if it looked like their team had no shot at securing a victory, but I can’t necessarily blame people who throw in the towel to try to beat traffic and get to bed at a reasonable hour when things look particularly dire.
That might be fairly acceptable in the regular season, but I’d argue it’s poor form in situations where, say, you’re facing your biggest rival in the NFL playoffs in a game where your squad still has a full quarter to try to turn things around.
That was the situation the Bears found themselves dealing with last season when they hosted the Packers in an NFC Wild Card showdown on January 10th. The home team headed into the fourth quarter trailing 21-6, but they ended up scoring 25 points in the final frame to earn the 31-27 win (the 18-point hole they crawled out of was tied for the seventh-biggest comeback in postseason history).
On Wednesday, Chicago Mayor Brendan Johnson sat down for an interview with 104.3 The Score to discuss the ongoing stadium issue.
He used the conversation to highlight problems at Soldier Field that need to be addressed, which included the traffic woes he illustrated with an anecdote where he revealed he left that game early and was still in the parking lot when they pulled off the comeback.
Brandon Johnson notes the ingress/egress of...
