Just when Bears kicker Cairo Santos has buried the past and rescued his career, he must revisit the site of his most epic disaster.
He’ll return to Nissan Stadium when the Bears face the Titans on Sunday, and the last time he kicked there he went 0 for 4 on field goals and got cut the next day. There might be more pressure on him this week than in either of his game-on-the-line field goals for the Bears this season.
But Santos seems as cool and confident as ever.
“Nashville, I thought it was a great place to kick,” he said. “It’s going to be, I think, a good atmosphere to kick in and something I’m familiar with.”
Last October, it wasn’t such a good atmosphere. Santos was booed off the field after missing wildly from 53 yards with six minutes left in a game the Titans lost 14-7.
Nothing went right that day.
Santos opened by slicing a 50-yarder wide left in the second quarter, then shanked one wide right — by a lot — from 36 yards just before halftime. He found his footing by hitting a 38-yard extra point in the third, but had his 33-yard try in the fourth tipped at the line and it fell a few feet short of the crossbar.
He bottomed out with the 53-yard miss as coach Mike Vrabel closed his eyes in disgust, making him the only kicker in the past decade to go 0 for 4. Incidentally, the Titans replaced him with Cody Parkey.
Santos called it “a very painful, extremely disappointing day,” and it was the first thing he was asked about when the Bears signed him this season.
“It was just a freak day — something that not even in my worst nightmares could happen,” he said in September. “Nobody’s immune to a day like that, so you always have to stay humble.
“So I trust myself that I just had to move on. And I did.”
He certainly did.
Santos has hit 14 of 16 field goals this season, including the game-winner with 1:17 left against the Buccaneers and a 51-yard bomb to force overtime against the Saints with 13 seconds remaining Sunday. His only misses were from 46 and 50 yards.
If Santos maintains his 87.5% field-goal accuracy, it’ll be the best by any Bears kicker other than Robbie Gould.
It’s stunning that of all kickers, Santos could be the one to break the Curse of Robbie Gould. The Bears have tried five kickers — Santos, Mike Nugent, Connor Barth, Parkey, Eddy Pineiro — in four seasons since general manager Ryan Pace cut Gould. Over that same span, Gould ranks sixth in the NFL with 89.7% of his field goals made.
Santos’ first stop in Chicago was in 2017 and lasted two weeks. He reinjured his groin in pre-game warmups, went on injured reserve and bounced among the Jets, Rams, Buccaneers and Titans before the Bears brought him in as an emergency option as Pineiro suffered a knee injury in the preseason.
Knowing Pineiro would be out for a while, it was a controversial and gutsy call by Pace and coach Matt Nagy to bet the season on Santos. He impressed Nagy by hitting 85% of his field goals for the Chiefs from 2014 through ’17, when Nagy was an assistant there, and that outweighed his brutal 19-for-29 record since then.
Now, even if Pineiro was ready, it’s obvious the Bears would stick with Santos.
“I think it’s just a guy that’s found his rhythm,” special teams coordinator Chris Tabor said.
Santos believed his three-year slump was entirely health-related, and now that his body is sound, so are his kicks. He seems good mentally, too, whether he’s facing the looming challenge of November and December field goals on the lakefront or dragging up memories of the worst day of his career.
