Bears fans hoping for a surprise acquisition of former Bear Robbie Gould to solve the team’s kicking problem — an unlikely event at any stage of the offseason — had their hopes dashed when the 49ers and Gould agreed to a two-year contract with a two-year team option Monday.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Gould will sign a two-year, $10.5 million fully guaranteed contract, with an option for two more years that would make it a four-year, $19 million contract with $15 million guaranteed.
The 49ers had placed the franchise tag on Gould in the offseason — a one-year, $5 million deal that would have made Gould the highest-paid kicker in the NFL. But Gould balked at that and demanded a trade — saying he wanted to play closer to his hometown of Chicago — if he did not get a multiple-year deal. That opened speculation that the Bears could solve both problems — their own kicking vacancy in the wake of the Cody Parkey failure and Gould’s desire to return to Chicago — by trading for Gould.
But that was an extreme long shot from the beginning. The Bears are determined to find a young — and salary-cap-friendly — kicker who will grow into a long-term solution. They will enter training camp with 24-year-old Elliott Fry and 23-year-old Eddy Piñeiro, neither of whom has kicked in the NFL. Fry and Piñeiro are the survivors of an eight-player kicking derby the Bears conducted in the offseason after cutting Parkey, who missed eight field goal attempts and three PATs in 2018 — including a would-be game-winning field goal in the wild-card playoff game that hit the left upright and crossbar.
Monday is the final day that players with the franchise tag can sign longer-term deals with their team.
Gould has been the most accurate place-kicker in the NFL since he was cut by the Bears following the preseason in 2016. He has made 84-of-87 field goal attempts (96.6 percent), including 6-of-6 on kicks of 50 or more yards with the Giants and 49ers. The Bears are 60-of-79 (75.9 percent) on field goals — with Connor Barth, Mike Nugent, Cairo Santos and Parkey — since cutting Gould.
