After everything the Bears have endured at kicker the last several years, most recently an injury to promising incumbent Eddy Pineiro, they’ll turn to the player with the second-worst field goal percentage in the NFL over the last three seasons to handle their opener.
Meet Cairo Santos. If the game against the Lions comes down to a field goal, it’ll be his.
Meet him again, actually, since the Bears were one of his six stops over the last three years. He went 1 for 2 in a game against the Eagles in 2017, then missed the next one because a groin injury in warmups.
He has made 68.8 percent of his field goals while kicking for the Chiefs, Bears, Rams, Buccaneers and Titans (he also signed with the Jets in 2018 but got cut in the preseason), and Tennessee cut him last season for going 0 for 4 in a 14-7 loss to the Bills.
Nothing to worry about, coach Matt Nagy said Thursday. He was an assistant with the Chiefs during Santos’ good years, 2014 through ’16, and that overshadows all the tumult since.
“I just know from my history, playing outside in Arrowhead and other places for three years with Cairo, it was just one of those deals where you never were concerned,” Nagy said. “They’re all going to have some misses, but it wasn’t something where you were holding your breath. That’s just how I felt.
“Right now, he’s in here, in training camp and these last practices and ... he’s making a lot of kicks right now, which I like.”
