Welcome into the Undercenter podcast. I'm Lawrence Holmes. You can usually check me out on the postgame show. I am here with the two guys that cover the bears every day for you here on NBCSportschicago.com,

JJ Snankovitz, and John Moon Mullen.

What you may hear in the background is a little bit of construction.

They are, I know I'm going to get punched by Moon for this,

but they are laying a foundation both figuratively and literally here at Hallis Hall.

This is just twitching right now.

He's so ready to just hit me.

All right, Moon, let's start with you.

For the uninitiated, for the Bears fan that's just picking up this podcast because

they love the Bears, what in the world is an OTA and why is it important?

It's really actually a good point to start with that, Lawrence, because it's an organized team

activity and there's a number of them permitted under the collective bargaining agreement.

It's basically a pre-camp camp.

So this is where they're installing, it's an orientation program.

I mean, they've been doing it through the off-season more or less, because there are strict limits on what they can do in terms of with the players.

But this is really a hands-on and on the field orientation.

So when they get to training camp, they'll still be learning.

But this is really, okay, we're running plays, we're going to really focus on depth. They're

really getting to the actual systems they want to run, where they want to run the routes,

routes to, what shoulder they're playing. So this is really the hands-on stuff.

JJ, this is the first time that we've had the opportunity to see the full squad under

McNagie.

...