Four years into his Bears career, it’s easy to take Cairo Santos’ reliability for granted. It’s easy to forget the string of so-so kickers who couldn’t be counted upon to come through in the biggest moments. After the team cut Robbie Gould in 2016, they had Connor Barth and his sub-75% hit rate, Eddy Pineiro and his hot-and-cold streaks, and of course Cody Parkey and the doink that still rings regularly on social media.
Santos has taken the drama out of one of the more dramatic plays in the game. He’s saved Chicago from hand-wringing over every field goal attempt. As it turns out, Chicago did the same for Santos, too.
“It’s the place that saved my career,” Santos said. “It’s a place that will mean a lot to me no matter how many years I keep playing here.”
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Santos started his career as an undrafted free agent with the Chiefs in 2014. Over the course of training camp that summer, he beat out Ryan Succop and entered the season as the team’s starting kicker. He was solid as a rookie, connecting on 26-28 field goals and 22-24 extra points. That year began a respectable stretch of hitting 84.3% of his field goals over three seasons, including a 7-12 clip from 50 yards out or more. By the time training camp in 2017 rolled around, it seemed like Santos was well on his way to a lengthy career as a reliable kicker in Kansas City.
“I was having a heck of a year, heck of a training camp,” Santos said. “I remember they did an article that I hadn’t missed a kick all of training camp.”
But one particularly cold and rainy day, Santos felt a bit sore after kicking wet, heavy balls repeatedly. When he went back out for practice the next day, things got worse.
“I felt a pop in my groin, which ended up being a tear.”
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Santos ended up missing the team’s first three preseason games, but rushed to get back for the fourth since the Chiefs wanted him ready for Week 1. According to Santos it was a quick return from the injury, so the team limited him to just extra points in the preseason finale and the regular season opener. He went 7-7 on point-after tries over those two games.
“I was actually kicking without any pain, feeling strong, hitting good kickoffs and stuff like that. But then the third game, it was against the Chargers, during warmups on my kickoff I felt the same kind of tear in my groin. At that time it was worse, and I played through the game with that. I still kept playing and kicking, and making it worse and worse.”
Santos’ injury got to the point where simply resting for a month wasn’t going to fix it. He wanted to rehab it properly and wanted to rehab it on his own. He was released from the Chiefs, went home and started working with a group of trainers.
“I was getting tons of calls to do workouts in those early couple weeks of being released, but I just wasn’t healthy,” Santos said. “It was hard because you don’t want to pass up opportunities because you never know when teams just turn the page on you. So I tried to go as fast as possible in my rehab.”
One of the teams that was interested in Santos from the start was the Bears. Ryan Pace was the GM at the time and was familiar with Santos from their time together in New Orleans. Pace was working with the Saints when Santos was in college at Tulane. When he felt like he was ready, Santos accepted the Bears’ call to try out in Chicago.
“I came here, kicked great at the workout and signed with them.”
Two weeks later, Santos re-tore his groin.
Looking back, Santos believes the increased workload of kicking during a week of practice, coupled with the chillier temperatures in Lake Forest led to him re-aggravating his groin.
“I wasn’t ready the way that I thought I was.”
Unlike the Chiefs, the Bears were in no rush to get Santos back on the field. They sent him to Dr. William Meyers in Philadelphia, who’s considered one of the best core muscle doctors in the world. Even when it became clear that Santos wasn’t going to return for the rest of the season, and even though he was only under contract for one year, the Bears continued to help him. Up until the start of the new league year when his contract expired, the Bears gave Santos whatever support he needed in his rehab. He’ll always be thankful for how the organization treated him during one of the most challenging points in his career.
The 2018 and 2019 seasons were filled with more struggles. Santos bounced from the Jets to the Rams to the Buccaneers and finally the Titans. Over the course of those two seasons he never felt like himself and he couldn’t find consistent success. In 2018, he made a career-low 77.8% of his field goal attempts. In 2019, he dropped to an abysmal 44.4% hit rate on field goals.
“I was still feeling things in my groin that wasn’t exactly tearing or injuring, but it was scar tissue popping and things like that,” Santos said. “I had to change the way that I kicked and added steps to my body to have my body working, which led to a lot of inconsistencies and not lasting long with the opportunities that I did have.”
Santos hit rock bottom with an 0-4 performance for the Titans in Week 5 of the 2019 season. Tennessee released him the following Monday, and after that he stopped getting calls for other workouts or opportunities. The league had turned the page on him, just as he had feared it might back in 2017.
“I think the bad game may have spooked teams,” Santos said.
Even though Santos went the rest of the year and the following summer without any interest from teams, he never doubted he would eventually get another chance in the NFL. He believed he needed just one more opportunity to get his career back on track.
“I still believed that I was good enough and I still believed in my faith in God, as well. Those things kind of kept the fire going until I got another opportunity, which thankfully came. The rest just kind of took care of itself.
“My passion was always to be a professional athlete. It was always soccer, growing up in Brazil, and even when I moved to the United States and through high school I knew I didn’t like doing anything else. There was no Option B. Then once I learned football and what I do with kicking, that fulfilled that soccer passion.
“Really there’s nothing else.”
Looking back, Santos believes the time off in 2019 and 2020 was a blessing in disguise. During that time his groin was able to fully heal, so that when the Bears finally did call again he was ready.
“It was like, ‘Yes! When can I come in?’ because I was so hungry for the next opportunity.”
The opportunity was not a slam dunk, however, and Santos knew the challenge in front of him. He was only coming to Chicago as a contingency plan for the Bears since Eddie Pineiro was hurt throughout training camp. He also knew that Soldier Field is one of the toughest places to kick in the country.
“In my head it was like, ‘Ok, this is not the ideal place to get things rolling… I need to re-up myself and this is a very tough and challenging place to kick.’”
Santos also didn’t like that he was only getting the chance because Pineiro was hurt.
“It kind of brought me back to when I was with the Chiefs and I got hurt. It was the same injury and they brought in Harrison Butker. It was just kinda not the ideal opportunity, because I don’t want to take somebody’s job.”
But it was an opportunity nonetheless and Santos was not going to let it slip away, he was going to try to run with it.
Looking back, it may have been another blessing in disguise.
“I just had to be in that mindset that I have to win each and every day. I think that put me to not looking too far ahead. Not looking at, am I going to be the kicker in Chicago? Am I going to reestablish myself in the NFL? The focus was just doing the things that I needed to do to be the best version each day that I kick the ball here in Chicago.”
Pineiro ended up going on injured reserve before Week 1 and the job was Santos’ to start the season. From there, many, many good days followed and by the end of the year Santos set two franchise records. He scored a new three-year, $9 million deal, too.
Santos’ 93.8% hit rate on field goals in 2020 remains the best percentage in a single season in Bears history. He also hit 27-consecutive field goals to end the year (a record), and continued that streak until Week 9 of the 2021 season. Santos' streak ended at 40-straight field goal conversions (also a record).
“The results just came as they came, one kick at a time,” Santos said. “I definitely wasn’t planning to make 40 field goals in a row starting in 2020. I wasn’t planning to have the best season that year. The type of work that you need to bring as a Bears player kinda led to those outcomes.”
Santos said the challenge of learning to kick well in Chicago wasn’t as tough as he expected, in large part due to the support he got from many coaches and teammates. He singled out former special teams coordinator Chris Tabor, kicking consultant Jamie Kohl, long-snapper Patrick Scales and former punter Pat O’Donnell for their help.
He also credits a healthy respect for Chicago wind.
“I never feel like I have it figured out here in Chicago, or that I’m always going to kick well. I humble myself every day.”
Meanwhile, current special teams coordinator Richard Hightower praises Santos’ mental fortitude for his continued success with the Bears. He compared Santos’ mental makeup to Gould’s and Phil Dawson’s.
“I’m hard on myself, I really am,” Santos said. “I don’t allow myself to have as much fun as I would like to have. Having this job that’s so– it’s a privilege to have this job of playing in the NFL, one of the biggest leagues in the world. I demand a lot of myself because I want to reach my potential every single day. If I make a kick, or go 100% one day at practice, I expect and want to go 100% every time. It bothers me when I don’t.
“What I’ve learned is that every time I’m not perfect, it kinda adds to a layer of my strengths. Every bad game or bad kick, I go through whatever process that I need to, to learn what happened in those moments, and ‘Ok, what do I need to add to my better self to be a better kicker, be a better person?’
“I think I’ve grown through every failure that I’ve had. Every tragedy that I’ve had. I’ve had triumphs after every defeat, and it’s because of those moments that impact you negatively that you can turn it into an even bigger positive.”
Santos currently ranks as the most accurate kicker in Bears history. His 90.5% success rate on field goals is a full five percent better than Robbie Gould, who’s No. 2 on the list and finished his Bears career at 85.4%. If Santos goes 4-4 or better on field goals over the team’s three remaining games, he’ll break his own franchise record for best single season as a field goal kicker. There’s no doubt his NFL career is back on track, just like he believed it could be back in 2019.
There’s a lot Santos is thankful for over his time in Chicago, from his first stint in 2017 and now. But one of the things he’s most thankful for is that he can call Chicago home.
“Just being able to put your family in a house and not hotel rooms, have your kids born here, all of that, it adds to this place being special, no matter how long I stay here.”
Looking ahead, Santos is in need of a new contract again. He’s playing out the last three games of his current deal, now. Santos is the type of player who tells his agent to simply give him something to sign when a deal is ready. He doesn’t want to be told about every little detail, so he doesn’t know if his future is in Chicago, or elsewhere. And despite his resurgence, he doesn’t allow himself to feel like his NFL future is guaranteed at all.
“I still never have never been able to feel, after 10 years in the NFL, like I have job security. It’s part of the business.
“I’ve proved to perform better when I’m uncomfortable, so I’m ok with the process.”