LAKE FOREST, Ill. — The Chicago Bears‘ search for a replacement for Cody Parkey led the team to host eight kickers at their annual three-day rookie minicamp.
The early results from Friday are not encouraging.
Bears coach Matt Nagy instructed all eight kickers to attempt a 43-yard field goal in front of the entire rookie minicamp roster at the end of Friday’s practice. It was the same distance that Parkey, who the club released in the offseason, famously missed from at the end of a bitter playoff loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in January.
The final verdict: Chicago’s kickers combined to go 2-of-8.
“That’s not good enough,” Nagy said. “Now I will say this, we always look at the end result of what happens, which is 100 percent what matters right? But as we’re learning, two of those eight holds and snaps, it wasn’t 100 percent, alright. I’ll leave it at that.
“So it’s not always, ‘so we’ve got to work through that.’ That’s why after today we’re not going to just go about and make rash decisions or anything. We’re going to play it out.”
The Bears currently have four kickers under contract and four at rookie minicamp on a tryout basis. Chicago plans to eventually whittle the number down and have a full-blown kicking competition when the team reports to training camp in July.
“We have a method to our madness and, again, I think for us, just besides finding a kicker and being able to see what they can do in practice, we want to be able to see as much as we can in game situations, how they handle that too,” Nagy said. “Because it’s one thing to be able to go over and bang 8-for-8 when it doesn’t really matter. But what about when it matters? You know that’s what we’re trying to figure out too, because we have young kickers and we’re trying to create that.”
The Bears have been unable to stabilize the kicker position since they released veteran Robbie Gould — the team’s all-time leading scorer — prior to the start of the 2016 regular season.
The San Francisco 49ers applied the franchise tag to Gould in the offseason, but he told ESPN last week that he wants to be traded and will not report before the 49ers’ season opener on Sept. 8.