Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show
Mike Florio talks Bears' quests for new stadium, compensatory picks
01 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the Bears' current situation regarding their quest for a new stadium?
Ladies and gentlemen, joining us now is a man who's got a massive brain.
Mike Florio.
He used to be a lawyer, then he decided to take his talents to the internet.
NBC Sports. I'm sorry I'm late, I was talking to Robert Kraft. That isn't the time for an airing of grievances. Pro Football Talk. I got a lot of problems with you people. No, you're going to hear about it. On Chicago Sports Radio, 104.3 The Score. I want to keep talking Legos.
We love talking NFL with our friend Mike Florio on X at Pro Football Talk. He is on Zoom right now. You know he's the creator and editor-in-chief of Pro Football Talk. Florio, what's going on, man? How are you? Good, how are you guys today?
We are doing well, and I am literally just looking at some of the tweets coming in from the owners meeting right now, and I know that you've already spoken to Kevin Warren, but he is doing something with our local media right now, and among the things that he is talking about right now, Kevin Warren said the team has 108 million fans globally.
More importantly, though, Mike, Bears president and CEO, that's who we're talking about, Kevin Warren, this is per our friend Patrick Finley of the Chicago Sun-Times, Warren says the team wants to pick a stadium site in late spring slash early summer, likely after the Illinois Assembly closes on May 31st. I know you already talked to Kevin Warren about the stadium situation.
In your conversation with him, did you get any inkling on the air with him, off the air with him, on which site they're going to end up at?
When he told us the same thing about the timeline, because I think that's critical. We know in the NFL and in most businesses, deadlines drive action. When is the deadline for making a decision? He said the same thing you just said. I got the impression over the course of the conversation. And this is all from the things that were said on the air. I've,
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Chapter 2: What insights did Mike Florio share about the Bears' stadium site selection timeline?
You know why, Mike? Because if the Bears were going to move to Indiana, they would have done it by now. Instead, they have allowed the Illinois legislature to take its sweet time in terms of a deal and property taxes and all of that. There was a time when I thought maybe it was going to happen, but I don't know if Indiana was ever going to happen. at this point.
Think about what happened the day that the Indiana governor signed into law the bill that had been passed by the legislature. They hurried and rushed to get it all done. They got it done. Bill becomes law. The provisions are in place. All the Bears have to say is thank you. And what did Kevin Warren say? He said, we're making progress with Illinois. So, yes, they were.
They were making a lot of progress with Illinois thanks to the fact that Indiana was ready to go.
Mike, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. I know you were out at the owners' meetings, as you just mentioned. What was your biggest takeaway from whether it's the rule changes or just what you're hearing about future NFL business?
Well, this was a strange year, and go back three weeks to free agency. It was a hectic, frenetic time, but when the biggest two free agents are Tyler Linderbaum and Malik Willis, it really wasn't a newsy, buzzy year. The Max Crosby failed trade ended up being the biggest news of the first week of free agency, and it involved a transaction that didn't happen.
So for the rules this year, and Rich McKay, the chair of the competition committee, mentioned this back around the time at the Scouting Combine, there really isn't a lot right now of NFL pressing business. As evidenced by the primary rule changes, three of them relate to the kickoff play.
And the big one is the one-year expansion of the availability for replay to assist with the junior college and high school officials who may end up on the field if the NFL locks the game officials out again as a result of this ongoing labor impasse that they're experiencing with the NFL Referees Association.
That seems to be topic A right now for the NFL, figuring that out, and I think also laying the foundation for a lockout. I feel like they want... to do this again. Whatever the motivation is, is it break the union? Is it use more technology? Is it incorporate AI? Whatever it may be, I think they're looking for a fundamental change to the way games are officiated.
And there's only so much they're going to get out of the union in its current composition. So that seems to be the biggest topic. And then there's that 18-game thing that will not go away because the NFL is determined to go to 18 games. The reality is their business has been slowed down.
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Chapter 3: How does Illinois' legislature impact the Bears' stadium plans?
I eventually got to the interesting wrinkle, at least it's interesting for me, that Matt Ryan was the quarterback throwing passes to Kyle Pitts when Kyle Pitts was a rookie. And now Matt Ryan is the head of football at a time when they put the franchise tag on Kyle Pitts. And I was like, hey, do you make that call to your former teammates?
Say, hey, sorry, Kyle, you don't get to go to free agency. You're going to be franchise tag. And he said, no, Ian Cunningham did it. He's the GM. And I said, so wait, look, people in Chicago are still. Curious, to say the least, about why the hiring of Ian Cunningham didn't result in the traditional, at least for as long as the rule's been in place, pair of compensatory third-round picks.
For Ian Cunningham being a GM, is he the GM? And Matt Ryan was very clear. He is the GM in every sense of the word. He is a general manager in the National Football League. I don't know why the NFL did this. When you look at what the Florida Attorney General has been doing over the course of the last week, and I think the NFL's
constant concern that they're going to be on the wrong end of a late night tweet storm from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Maybe they exercise their discretion in this case away from another little item of news that could have sparked the kind of blowback they're now getting from Florida. I don't know, but it just doesn't make sense to me. Who does it hurt?
And that's why I've called this like a huge unforced error for the NFL from the get-go. Who would have complained initially if the NFL would have given the Bears the compensatory picks? Who would have had standing to say, he's really not the general manager? The Falcons are saying, he is the general manager. Ian Cunningham's saying, I am the general manager.
It makes no sense that they wouldn't get the two third round picks. And now the NFL's in a box on this one because if they change course... It's a bigger story than it would have been if they'd just given him the two third-round picks in the first place.
It's giving parents because I said so, and I think we've all been there. I've got to ask you about this new rule change where apparently NFL owners have approved a change to scheduling policy, Mike, clarifying that Friday games are now no longer considered short weeks in the way that Thursday games are.
Previously, teams were limited to two short-week games per season, typically Thursday games, less rest. That rule still applies, but now these Friday games, like the Black Friday game we saw between the Eagles and the Bears last year, or Christmas this year, don't count toward that.
So a team can play two Thursday short-week games and still be scheduled for a standalone Friday game, giving the TV partners like Amazon more flexibility. The NFL's just doing whatever they want at this point, correct?
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the Bears' potential move to Indiana?
Look, the reality is when they launched it in 2003, they had a hell of a time getting it onto the basic cable packages. They started Thursday Night Football. as a way to give NFL Network games that would make NFL Network more attractive to the cable providers.
It's been a long slog for them to make NFL Network relevant because really it was basically just a nighttime studio show that used to be appointment viewing that doesn't even exist anymore, total access, and NFL Films productions. So it took games in 2006 to start finally getting it off the ground, but they've been trying for at least 10, 12 years
to unload NFL Network to someone, and ESPN's the one that finally bit.
Mike Florio joining us here. He's the creator, editor of Chief Pro Football Talk on Rahimi Harris and Grody on 104.3 The Score. Mike, I want to go back. We're talking the media portion of this and the NFL saying that they won't even have any more Monday night football games where two games are played at once. Is this just more of a push to this midweek thing? Because I find this fascinating.
If that's what this is, are we really going to have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday games
thursday night football in certain weeks where it's just literally five days in a row of nfl football i don't see why we wouldn't and thank god they got rid of the monday night double header look the purpose of standalone windows is to watch one game and i thought it was a mess trying to watch two games at once and you'd have both of them up and i know this was a common problem for fans you got both games up they got the score bugs up they put highlights
on one game. And what they're showing on one game, when they do a cut in on one game and they go two box, it's ahead of what's on the game that you're watching. It was a mess. And fortunately, the NFL realized we just need to focus on one game at a time. But you're right. OK, fine. Let's not do two games on Monday night.
Let's do a game on Monday night and Tuesday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night. Crazy. There are many ways that they can configure the schedule to play games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, especially if we're going to focus on the popular teams where, you know, you play Wednesday, then you play the following Tuesday, you get six days.
It's no different than playing on Monday and playing on Sunday. They'll find any way they can to justify it. That short week exemption is going to help them. And again, It makes for a more difficult scheduling process, but they'll do whatever they want to do to cram as much cheese as they can into every possible location in the pizza.
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