Bears To Sign K Cairo Santos

The Bears are expected to sign kicker Cairo Santos, as Adam Schefter of ESPN.com reports (via Twitter). Schefter’s ESPN colleague, Field Yates, had reported shortly beforehand that Chicago was bringing Santos in for a workout (Twitter link).

Santos signed with the Chiefs as a UDFA in 2014 and served as Kansas City’s kicker from 2014-16. He was largely successful during that time, never hitting less than 81.1% of his kicks and nailing a very strong 88.6% in 2016. But a groin injury derailed his career a bit, and KC waived him partway through the 2017 season. The Bears picked him up a few weeks later, but he appeared in just two games for Chicago before landing on IR.

Over the past two seasons, Santos has suited up for the Rams, Bucs, and Titans. He hooked on with Tennessee just before the start of the 2019 season to replace the injured Ryan Succop, but his stint in the Music City was disastrous. In his fifth game with the Titans, Santos missed four field goals in a 14-7 loss, and he was cut shortly thereafter.

The Bears appeared to stabilize their kicking situation with Eddy Pineiro in 2019. Pineiro won the job after an open casting call last offseason, and he ultimately connected on 23 of 28 field goal tries and 27 of 29 PATs. But as Jason Lieser of the Chicago Sun-Times tweets, head coach Matt Nagy gave a non-answer yesterday when asked how Pineiro was doing in camp thus far. Apparently, Pineiro did not attempt a single field goal during the portions of practice that were open to the media this past week, so there is plenty of speculation that Santos may be more than just veteran competition.