Cairo Santos has never missed a kick inside of 40 yards in a Chicago Bears uniform. The veteran kicker is 36 of 36 inside of 40 yards with the Bears, a strong five-year sample size.
The Bears had plenty of time to get Santos inside that 40-yard mark in Sunday’s loss to the Green Bay Packers. They had second-and-8 at the Packers’ 28-yard line with 30 seconds left, enough time to run another play (or maybe two) and gain 7 yards to get in the range where Santos is perfect.
Bears head coach Matt Eberflus chose to run down the clock to three seconds left and set Santos up for a 46-yard field goal try. The kick was blocked and the Packers won 20-19. Did Eberflus consider running another play and giving Santos an easier kick?
“The obvious risks are, they stammer, you false start you go backwards, you look at all that, all that,” Eberflus said Monday, via a team transcript. “You run an outside play and they call holding. You throw a pass and it gets tipped, whatever it is. If you feel good about your decision there and the wind conditions and what the conditions are at that point and where you are in the field.
“You feel good about it, you take it down and then you kick it and we felt good about it.”
There was too much at stake for Eberflus to risk running another play. If the kick isn’t blocked, those questions aren’t asked — proving hindsight is 20-20. The Bears were in Santos’ range.
“Once you’re inside that line there, you feel good about it.,” Eberflus said. “Cairo’s line, we don’t talk about lines, you know, per se. He was inside, well inside the line, for his comfortability there.”
Would Eberflus change anything regarding where he kicked the ball? Again if the kick is executed and not blocked, this isn’t a talking point.
“Where the conditions were and where we were in the game I would say yes, I would do the same,” Eberflus said. “I mean, would you like to be closer? Sure, you’d like it to be at the 15-yard line. It is where it is — you could have done a bunch of different things there.
“You could have run a pass, you could have run an outside play, you could have run another play that we punched it there forward for 2 yards from the 30 to the 28. If that thing breaks for a couple of more yards, it’s definitely a positive — but that’s where it is.”
Santos had converted 36 of 43 attempts (81.8%) between 40-49 yards with Chicago before missing the game-winning field goal Sunday.
