Santos aims for perfection, takes what he can get

Cairo Santos continues to find work in the NFL.

However, he has yet to do the job … at least as he sees it.

“I’m only here to make every single kick and I’m available one game at a time to help the team win,” Santos said Wednesday. “If it’s for eight games … or throughout the season, I’ll just take it a game at a time.

“… I was in a similar scenario last year with the Rams. I just planned on making all my kicks and helping the team win there.”

In the last two years Santos has become a mercenary kicker. Since November 2017, he has joined four franchises as a temporary replacement when someone got injured. The Tennessee Titans became the fourth Wednesday when they signed him to fill in for Ryan Succop, who was placed on injured reserve and will miss at least the first eight weeks of the season.

Santos has not made “every single kick” at any of those stops but he has made enough of them that he continues to get calls. The Titans reached out to him on Monday when it became apparent that Succop would need extra time to recover from offseason knee surgery.

For his career, he has made 83.2 percent of his field goal attempts and 149 of 155 (96.1 percent) of his extra points. By comparison, Succop has connected on 83.6 percent of his field goal tries and 97.2 percent of his PATs.

Santos auditioned for Titans coaches and personnel people Wednesday morning and agreed to a deal a short time later.

“We got a guy in here that we feel really comfortable about that looked really good,” coach Mike Vrabel said. “… Everything we saw, I would say [he is] more than capable.”

Santos was available because he lost a training camp competition with rookie Matt Gay, a fifth-round draft pick in Tampa Bay.

He joined the Buccaneers last year in Week 11 and finished the season with them. Earlier in the year, he spent two weeks with the Los Angeles Rams. He was 5-for-6 on field goals with the Rams and 9-for-12 with the Buccaneers. Between the teams he was 22-for-23 on PATs.

In 2017, he signed with the Chicago Bears for two weeks beginning in late November and went 1-for-2 on field goals and 2-for-2 on extra points.

“I’ve sort of been used to it the last couple of years,” Santos said. “I came in and stepped in with the Bears, the Rams and then the Bucs midseason. So it’s something I don’t really think about. I’m a professional. I go about my business and I know what the expectation is of me. So I just focus on getting that done for the team.”

He actually began in the NFL as a full-time kicker. In 2014 as an undafted rookie out of Tulane, he unseated Succop in Kansas City. He remained the Chiefs kicker until early in 2017, when a groin injury sidelined him. His replacement at that time, Harrison Butker, remains Kansas City’s kicker.

In this case, he insists, he plans to be around only as long as he is needed.

“I reached out to Ryan because he’s a guy I admire a lot as a player and as a person,” Santos said. “We’ve stayed in touch ever since we were in Kansas City together. I was afraid it was something serious with his knee and I was hoping it wouldn’t be that. I told him that I respect him.

“… I don’t know how long I’ll be here. My goal is make all my kicks (each day) in practice.”

No doubt, he will settle for making enough to get another opportunity.