I regret to inform you that the Chicago Bears are once again looking for kicking help.
Cairo Santos’ status is up-in-the-air for Sunday’s Bears game against the Giants.
A personal issue has kept Santos from practicing in each of the last two days. And it has left him as “questionable” to play, per Friday’s practice/injury report. With that in mind, the Bears were busy working out kickers just in case Cairo can’t kick it out east.
The Chicago Tribune’s Brad Biggs has details:
It’s not the great kicking competition of 2019, but let’s get to know some kickers:
- Josh Lambo is the most accomplished of the kicking trio in for tryouts at Halas Hall. Lambo, 31, has seven years of kicking experience with the Chargers (2015-16) and Jaguars (2017-21). His résumé boasts an 87.1 percent success rate, which includes hitting 95 percent of his kicks (76-for-80) over 43 games from 2017-20. Lambo, who was in for a tryout in October 2017, was part of our obsessive kicker watch list in 2019 before signing an extension with the Jaguars.
- Michael Badgley, a.k.a. The Money Badger, is a 27-year-old kicker who has spent time with the Chargers (2018-20), Colts (2021), and Titans (2021). The 2020 campaign was a disaster for Badgley, as he made just 72.7 percent of his kicks. But in the two years prior (23/32, 87.5% in 18 games) and year that followed (18/22, 81.8%) weren’t disastrous.
- Brian Johnson was a Bears camp leg in 2021. A preseason standout who served as the Bears’ emergency kicker while on the practice squad for much of last year, Johnson did spend time with the Saints and the artists formerly known as the Washington Football Team. Johnson is 10-for-10 in his pro kicking career, including this game-winner:
At least the Bears have some good options to choose from should they need to bring on a kicker. Ideally, it won’t come to a late-week signing. But perhaps this might nudge the Bears to bring in someone to be their emergency kicker just in case.