As the Chicago Bears prepare to play the Minnesota Vikings in frigid conditions at the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium, not even Brett Favre's upgraded status to questionable can buck the biggest player in Monday night's game -- Mother Nature.
Snow started steadily falling in the Twin Cities on Monday afternoon and forecasts called for wind-chill temperatures well below zero, with 3 to 5 inches forecast by game time -- conditions that Favre got to know well during 16 years with the Green Bay Packers.
The Vikings and the NFL have worked around the clock to clear 20-inch snow drifts from the field, but concerns persist about the safety of playing on a mostly frozen surface without any type of heating aparatus to thaw the field.
NFL Network's Albert Breer reported Monday that the tarp covering the field in the hours before game time -- allowing for heated warmers below to keep the turf from freezing -- will come off the field three hours before gametime.
Field crews removed the field heaters just before 4 p.m. EST, and a field supervisor told NFL Network that they will not be reinstalled prior to kickoff.
"The problem now is once that tarp comes off the field three hours before gametime, it's not going back on," Breer said. "So snow will likely accumulate on the field and there's probably nothing they can do about it after that."
The Vikings and Bears are playing at the University of Minnesota's outdoor stadium because the Metrodome's roof collapsed last weekend after a heavy snowstorm. The roof's failure caused the Vikings-Giants game to be moved to Detroit, but the university was able to get its two-year-old stadium ready to host the Bears.
Vikings punter Chris Kluwetook to Twitter on Sunday and described the field conditions at the TCF Bank Stadium as "unplayable."
"Serious time -- All respect to the people that cleared the field and got it ready, you did an amazing job. That being said, it's unplayable," Kluwe tweeted after the Vikings practiced on the field for the first time Sunday.
Added Kluwe: "The field is as hard as concrete an hour and a half after they took the tarp off, and anyone that hits their head is getting a concussion."
Kluwe went on to call the NFL's stance on player safety "hypocritical" and predicted that Monday's game would be a "trainwreck."
Breer said the players he spokes to -- including running back Adrian Peterson and tight end Visanthe Shiancoe -- following that same walkthrough, weren't quite as negative about the conditions as Kluwe.
"They said it's not that much worse than any other turf field in the winter. The difference is, is that outside the numbers and the end zone, there's still snow and ice. Now Shiancoe said a stadium official told him that that would be taken care of by game time."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
