Wind and cold add another challenge for Chicago Bears kicker Cairo Santos amid a string of misses: ‘We’ve got to get back to work’

The weather conditions for Saturday’s Chicago Bears-Buffalo Bills game at Soldier Field won’t be ideal for a kicker who has experienced issues in recent weeks.

But Cairo Santos is doing his best to prepare for a forecast that calls for a temperature of 9 degrees with a windchill of minus-11 and potential wind gusts of more than 30 mph at kickoff.

Santos said he and Bears long snapper Patrick Scales and punter/holder Trenton Gill likely won’t go to Soldier Field to practice because of the impending storm, but they will work outside Thursday and Friday to prepare for the wind and cold.

“Ultimately everything is about what (Saturday’s) pregame warmup is going to be,” Santos said. “So I can prepare all week, and really the true preparation is going to be (the) warmup.”

Santos is coming off his third missed extra-point attempt in five games, the last in cold and windy conditions Sunday in a loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. That miss, wide left, following David Montgomery’s 9-yard touchdown run in the second quarter prompted Santos to make an adjustment in his setup during his second-half extra-point attempts.

Santos said he had kicked from the right hash for eight years, but a “glitch” in his visuals from that spot prompted him to move to the middle. He made both second-half PATs from the middle, and he said Wednesday’s practice also showed promise while kicking from the middle. He might also kick from the left, depending on the wind, he said.

“The process of setting up and kicking that kick from the right hash just became really repetitive,” Santos said. “I just feel like right now the ball is not shooting where I’m aiming compared to the other kicks, the field goals from other hashes, other spots on the field. So I just felt like I need some change in that visual to line up the kick from the different angle.

“It’s helped me for a long time kicking from the right hash, but I feel like a bad habit is starting to develop. And it just feels easier to go and explore a different angle. I tried to keep grinding it out up to this point, and I had five misses. So it just didn’t work to stick with it.”

For much of his nearly three seasons in Chicago, Santos, a nine-year NFL veteran, has been the picture of reliability. In his first two seasons with the Bears in 2020 and 2021, he made 56 of 62 field goals and 63 of 65 extra points, setting the franchise record by making 40 consecutive field-goal attempts. Before his current rough patch, he hadn’t missed a kick in seven games.

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But now he has missed five kicks combined between field-goal and extra-point attempts over the last five games, an issue Santos said Sunday “frustrates and annoys you.”

Special teams coordinator Richard Hightower, however, doesn’t think there’s any issue with Santos’ confidence.

“Some people need mental coaching; some people don’t need mental coaching,” Hightower said, arguing that outside observers sometimes confuse technical issues for mental issues in kicking. “With this kid, I don’t think it’s mental. I just think we’ve got to get back to work.”

Hightower said the Bears are “excited” about an even bigger weather challenge this week than the one against the Eagles, which limited Santos’ field-goal range.

Hightower said the Bears last week had Gill practice punts from inside the 50 with the understanding that Santos’ range might be affected by the cold and wind. They put Gill to work on one of them Sunday when they didn’t have Santos attempt a field goal after getting to the Eagles 30-yard line. Gill landed the punt at the 9 instead.

Santos said after the game that he had missed field goals from 46 yards and made from 50 yards at both ends of Soldier Field in pregame warmups, and the Bears determined ahead of time that Santos wouldn’t attempt a field goal beyond 45 yards.

“When you get into that cold weather, the ball was almost like you’re kicking a rock,” Hightower said. “It won’t travel as far. … We prepared (Gill) for that moment as well as prepared Cairo for his moment. It’s not a ‘I said, you said’ kick-line-type deal. We agree on that before the game. We look at it. We make sure it’s the best for the team because if you ever miss a kick and you have a kick line wrong, then you put the defense in a bad situation.”

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That’s part of the reason Saturday’s warmups will be so important for Santos.

Santos said he previously kicked on a 6-degree day in Kansas City, Mo., against the Tennessee Titans in December 2016.

“In pregame warmups, I couldn’t kick that many balls in a row before taking a break because my foot was just numb,” he said.

Santos went on to make both extra-point attempts and his only field-goal attempt in that game.