As part of the Chicago Bears leaving no stone un-turned in an attempt to get their kicking situation right, the team has hired a consultant to push things to another level:
#Bears hired Jamie Kohl as a consultant to work with team’s kickers.
— Brad Biggs (@BradBiggs) May 3, 2019
Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune tweets the team hired Jamie Kohl as a consultant who will work with the kickers in camp. And after going 2-for-8 from Cody Parkey range yesterday, it’s fair to say that the kickers the Bears have in camp could use as much consulting as humanly possible.
Kohl is the Camp Director at Kohl’s Professional Camps, which focuses on training aspiring kickers, punters, and long snappers. The camps boast “the most full-time coaches in the industry” and has aided some of the league’s best kickers and punters in reaching their peak levels of performance. Among the notable active specialists who came through Kohl’s camps are Harrison Butker (Chiefs), Jake Elliott (Eagles), and Wil Lutz (Saints). Of the Bears’ current kickers, Chris Blewitt (he won a Kohl’s kicking competition earlier in the year), Emmit Carpenter (who is among the eight kickers in camp), and John Baron II (who signed as a UDFA and was one of the two kickers who made the 43-yard try on Friday) have connections to Kohl’s camps. I don’t know if that familiarity will give them a leg up on the competition, but it’s something to keep in mind as the Bears go through this process.
All things considered, this seems like a smart hire. Having another set of eyes on the team’s biggest question-mark could ultimately be quite helpful. And since those eyes have seen what good kicking is supposed to look like, I feel better about the competition now than I did before it started. But to be honest, that might not be saying all that much.