The Chicago Bears were hosting San Francisco two weeks ago. The game was tied with two seconds left in regulation. Robbie Gould, the Bears’ kicker since 2005, set up to try a 36-yard field goal.
“Good as Gould,” Bears fans like to say. He’s one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history – 10th on the all-time list at 85%. Distance doesn’t seem to bother him – he’s 76% from 50-59 yards. And with home games in windy and often cold Chicago, he’s used to bad weather. So a 50-degree day with a five-mile-an-hour wind and a little rain was nothing to worry about. He has made 81% of his 62 career field-goal tries with wind speeds higher than 12 mph.
The kick sailed wide to the left. Very wide. His second straight miss. Bears Nation watched in dismay as Blaine Gabbert made them pay for the error, a long touchdown pass sending the 49ers to an overtime victory.
A week later the Redskins were in town, leading by three with 1:45 left in regulation. Gould stepped onto the field to try a 50-yarder. This time the ball sailed to the right, not missing by much, but by Gould’s lofty standards a bad miss. Washington held on for the win.
Instead of sitting at 7-6 and having a mediocre chance of making the playoffs, the Bears are now 5-8 and needing one of those million-to-one season finishes where they get help from multiple improbable places to get in. In other words, it’s about time to calculate their draft position and wonder who might be wearing a Bears uniform next season.
Chicago legend Dan Hampton has pretty much said he would fire Gould on the spot. Sports radio is ablaze with angry Chicagoans no longer tying their hopes to the Gould standard.
Gould took over the Bears’ kicking job early in the 2005 season. He was undrafted and had been cut by two teams that fall. But he made the most of his opportunity, making 21-of-27 field goals that year. He was an all-pro for the only time in his career the following season, hitting 32-of-36 field goals, including his first 24, as the Bears reached the Super Bowl.
He is now the all-time leader in points scored in team history. He also makes an average of $3.75 million – third among NFL kickers.
At 34, he’s not old by kicking standards. Plenty of leg left. He made his first 17 attempts this season, including four 50+ yarders. Then he missed three in a row for only the second time in his career. But two of those were fairly long and pushed just to the left and the third hit the left upright. Then he made another nine in a row, and midway through the 49ers game, fans were good as Gould with him.
And now he’s on another three-miss streak – three high-profile misses – and he’s firmly on the hot seat.
Is there such a thing as experienced kickers getting nervous?
I went through all 329 of Gould’s career field-goal attempts trying to find an answer. A true case of the “yips” in clutch situations would mean that even routine kicks would become an adventure. While certainly the 36-yard miss that sent the San Francisco game to overtime would qualify as a yip – Gould is as deadly as anyone on shorter kicks.
Kickers really don’t get a lot of opportunities with the game on the line. It seems like every week some little guy is dancing around like a dervish Gramatica at the end of a game, but that’s because there are 32 teams and the NFL is very competitive.
I’ve focused on a set of 16 kicks in Gould’s career. To qualify for this set, a kick had to be in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter or in overtime, and had to be 35 yards or longer (Gould has made all his career close-and-late kicks of 34 yards or less). The Bears had to be tied or trailing by three or fewer points. I tossed out the 66-yarder he missed at the end of regulation a couple of years ago, since he’s never tried any other kick of more than 58.
Until a couple of weeks ago, he was 11-for-14 with those clutch-and-late kicks. That’s a shade under his career average of 78% from 35 and out, but the sample size is far too small to say that’s significant.
But now, in the space of two weeks, Gould has missed for the fourth and fifth time in his career in this tiny category of true clutch kicks. Both instances very costly.
I should also note that the Bears went on to win two of the three pre-2015 games in which he missed clutch-and-late kicks. So, before two weeks ago, in only one game in his entire career did Bears fans have this sinking feeling that he may not be as good as Gould at the end of a game. And that was a road game. Coincidentally, after he missed the 66-yarder at the end of regulation two years ago in Minnesota, he missed from 47 in overtime and the Vikings came back to win.
Understandably, Bears fans are concerned and frustrated. What they’re seeing the last few weeks – especially the last two weeks – would probably end a young kicker’s career. He has had the two most clutch mistakes of his career hit him on consecutive weeks and it has pretty much ended the 2015 season for his team.
However, I have to point back to Gould’s extraordinary reliability over an 11-year career and say that it’s very likely he will be good as Gould for a long time to come.