The Bears Don't Need This Problem Again

At trade deadline the goofy ideas and suggestions for teams to make moves seem to hit a zenith.

They all need to come out now because teams are locked in the rest of the year and any suggestions made from here on out have the stamp of distant future.

One such suggestion comes from Sports Illustrated's Gilberto Manzano and Matt Verderame with their suggestion for a San Francisco 49ers trade in a piece suggesting a player every team should trade and acquire.

The article suggests the 49ers go find themselves a kicker.

They had a perfectly fine kicker but he didn't want to go back there another year. That was Robbie Gould. So he's just watching football right now.

The kicker suggested for the 49ers to acquire via trade is none other than Bears kicker Cairo Santos.

This might be one of the worst suggestions ever put forth in a speculatory trade article. It fails on two real levels.

1. Why Would the Bears Trade a Good Kicker?

There's no reason for the Bears to want to trade Santos. He's an excellent kicker. He doesn't have the strongest leg but it's not weak, either. He just made a 54-yard kick last week and has made a 55-yarder in the past.

In Chicago, on the lakefront, kickers don't usually think about making 60-yard field goals like it's a regular thing, the way they do in Denver or inside Sofi or Ford Field. Once November rolls around, field goals longer than 54 or 55 yards almost never occur because of the wind, cold, rain, snow and in the past, the condition of the field. The new bermuda style of turf has been universally praised so perhaps those days are finally over.

Santos is at 90.8% accuracy as a Bears kicker on field goals and that includes his first short stint in 2017 when he missed a 50-plus kick. He has made 11 straight this year and finished last year making his last three after his last miss, a blocked kick against Green Bay.

There are only two kickers in the league who have made every boot this year and have tried at least one per week, Brandon Aubrey of Dallas (16) and Santos.

So the Bears should want, what, someone who misses?

The 49ers need a kicker. They had a good one and don't any more. It's their problem.

2. Double-Doink

If there's one city that shouldn't want to mess with success in field goal kicking, it's Chicago.

The 2018 playoffs weren't that long ago. The tears have barely dried since Cody Parkey put one off two pieces of metal to kill the comeback bid authored by Mitchell Trubisky.

The ensuing wild search for a kicker and Eddy Piniero's miss against the Chargers in 2019 from 41 yards should have been enough to tell the Bears never mess with success.

For some reason, there is always this undercurrent of support in Chicago to bring back Robbie Gould and ditch Santos.

Santos is kicking the way Gould did when he was in his 20s and 30s. He had his successful time in Chicago and made 85.4%, and was prematurely booted out of town by Ryan Pace.

Pace isn't around now but that doesn't mean the Bears need to get rid of a perfectly effective kicker to bring back one who isn't even in the league this season.

They definitely don't need to flirt with the kicker market again when it's unnecessary.

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven