Bears kicker Cairo Santos: Chicago is ‘where my heart is’

Cairo Santos has earned some stability.

After the better part of three years bouncing from team to team, Santos has found a new home. The Bears officially signed Santos to a multi-year contract last week, which will keep him in Chicago through 2023 and could keep him here until 2025. The contract is worth up to $11 million in the first three years and could be worth up to $17.5 million if it extends into 2025.

Coming off a record-setting season, Santos wanted to remain in Chicago. The 29-year-old Brazilian kicker’s long odyssey finally is over. Between 2017 and 2019, Santos played for five teams, including a brief stint with the Bears in 2017. This came after a promising start to his career, when he played in all 16 games for Kansas City in 2014, 2015 and 2016. But then a severe groin injury derailed his consistency.

[ Bears kicker Cairo Santos ready to 'prove myself' after injuries, struggles ]

Until 2020, when he rekindled his early success.

The Bears took a chance on Santos figuring they would need a second kicker during a season heavily impacted by COVID-19. Within days of Santos’ signing, Bears kicker Eddy Pineiro sat out with an injured groin. Pineiro never would see the field in 2020.

Instead, Santos set a Bears record by making 93.8% of his field goal attempts. Santos ended the season with a string of 27 consecutive made field goals – also a team record – then went 1 for 1 in the Wild Card playoff game. He didn’t miss a field goal after Week 3 on Sept. 27.

He became a free agent after the season, but knew he wanted to remain with the Bears.

“I was telling my agent all along in the process I’m rooting for this thing to work out,” Santos said Tuesday. “That’s where my heart is, to remain with those guys.”

The signing signals what the Bears hope is an end to a prolonged kicker debacle. The position has had little stability since the team released Robbie Gould just before the 2016 season. During that time, nobody kicked more than one full season with the Bears. Then there was, of course, the double-doink missed field goal by kicker Cody Parkey in the 2018 Wild Card playoff game.

Parkey’s miss led to an extended kicker tryout in 2019, which Pineiro eventually won. Pineiro showed promise, making 82.1% of his field goals in 2019, and was the presumed starter heading into 2020.

Then Santos stole the show.

It was a masterful turnaround for a kicker who, only a year earlier, missed all four field goal attempts in a game as a member of the Tennessee Titans. The Titans cut him the next day.

“There were parts of those years that I was still playing [with other teams] that I just didn’t feel like I was popping the ball the way I used to,” Santos said. “To me it was more clear now, the season I had last year, that I got back to myself, if not even stronger.”

Santos’ journey hasn’t been easy. After he was cut by the Titans, his offseason was thrown off by the pandemic as he awaited a chance to prove himself again. Not until July did he have a tryout in California, where a number of NFL teams showed up. The Bears spotted him that day.

Chicago is a tough place to kick. Winds coming off Lake Michigan swirl around the bowl at Soldier Field. The wind can be blowing one direction in the first quarter and in the opposite direction by the fourth quarter, especially as the calendar turns into November and December.

Santos mastered it in 2020 as well as anyone has. Gould holds most of the Bears kicking records, and his career proved that long-term kicking success is possible in the Windy City. Prior to 2020, Gould held the team’s eight highest single-season field goal percentages, including the previous team record of 89.7% in 2013. Santos topped them all.

He was clutch, too. He made a 38-yard game-winner against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with 1:13 remaining. A 51-yard field goal with about two minutes remaining sent the Bears into overtime against New Orleans in Week 8.

If anything, last season gave him the confidence to stay out of his own head.

“It’s sort of dumb maybe to think that it’s [about] just not thinking so much about it,” Santos said. “It’s not overanalyzing every little thing that you did. Part of my success last year was just to respect the place. As I was getting the streak and many kicks under my belt, every day that I stepped at Halas Hall or Soldier Field, I had to respect what Chicago is to be a kicker and how hard that place is. That helped me just settle in.”