
Robbie Gould has said he wants to live in Chicago when his playing days are through.
Just not in the same house.
The Bears’ all-time leading scorer sold his five-bedroom, five-bathroom Kildeer home last week for $1 million, according to Zillow.com.
He’s not leaving the Chicago area, though. He is building a new home in the Chicago area, he told WSCR 670-AM in February.
Gould told the Sun-Times during Super Bowl week that he planned to stay in Chicago long after retirement and that the city “will always be home, no matter what.”
The timing of the sale is unrelated to the Bears’ placekicking woes and Gould’s own staring contest with the 49ers. He first put the house on the market last year.
As the Bears saw all three of their kickers miss a 42-yard field goal during Tuesday’s mandatory minicamp, their all-time leading scorer held out of his own team’s practice.
Gould did not show up to the 49ers’ mandatory minicamp Tuesday. He still has yet to sign his franchise tag, which would pay him $4.97 million in 2019, after requesting a trade. The 49ers have said they will not trade him.
“Obviously, I would much rather Robbie be here and be doing everything,” 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan told 49ers reporters Tuesday. “We’d love to have him around. But I understand how he feels and what’s going on. And if that’s the way he would like to do it, no problem with that at all.
“You’d always rather it be perfect the way we want it, but if he doesn’t show up until Week 1, it is what it is. I’ll take a very good kicker at any time … Robbie’s a hell of a kicker.”
The Bears, meanwhile, have yet to come close to solving their kicking conundrum. They cut Chris Blewitt on Wednesday morning, one day after all three of the team’s kickers missed a 42-yard field goal during practice and angered coach Matt Nagy. The Bears have two kickers left on their roster: Eddy Piñeiro and Elliott Fry.