The Bears will try out four more placekickers Tuesday, including one from the Canadian Football League and another from arena football, and unless all of them trip over their holders, the team will make its fourth kicking change of the season.
Following Chris Boniol’s decisive 41-yard miss in overtime in the Bears’ loss to Minnesota Sunday, coach Dick Jauron said Monday the team will likely make a change.
“We want to make sure that if we do make any change, we make one for the better,” said Jauron.
The Bears might not have had to make any moves involving kickers if Jeff Jaeger hadn’t suffered a hip flexor injury during training camp. Or if he hadn’t aggravated the injury after coming back three weeks into the season. Or if they had done a few things differently.
“I waited too long when (Jaeger got hurt),” player personnel chief Mark Hatley said Monday. “It’s probably my fault as much as anyone.”
Boniol, Jaeger and Brian Gowins have combined to make only 11 of 23 field goals, the worst percentage in the NFL. Missed field goals have been factors in four of their six losses.
Hatley has other regrets, such as not spending one of his three third-round picks this year on Kansas State’s Martin Gramatica, now with Tampa Bay.
“He was the best kicker I’d seen come out of college in a long time,” Hatley said. “I got talked out of it.”
Gramatica has connected on 14 of 18, including four of six from beyond 40 yards.
The Bears picked guard Rex Tucker at the 66th spot, receiver D’Wayne Bates 71st and receiver Marty Booker 78th before the Bucs landed Gramatica at the 80th spot.
When the Arizona Cardinals were shopping Joe Nedney before the Oct. 19 trading deadline, Hatley offered them a sixth-round pick for Chris Jacke and was turned down. The Cardinals wanted to keep Jacke and trade Nedney, who ended up in Baltimore but was cut last week.
Hatley said the Cardinals might have parted with Jacke for “a third or fourth, and maybe in retrospect it would have been worth it,” he said.
Nedney and Gowins are among four kickers scheduled for tryouts Tuesday. Also coming in are Bjorn Nittmo and Jon Baker.
Boniol is 5 of 9 with misses from 32, 44, 34 and 41 yards, and has missed at least one field goal in four of his five games as a Bear since replacing Jaeger, who reached a contract settlement with the Bears after aggravating the injury.
Gowins is the only Bears kicker to have a perfect game when he went 2 for 2 against Kansas City. Gowins was 4 of 6 in two games, missing from 50 and 48 yards against Seattle at home.
The kicking situation has been so desperate it has bordered on the ridiculous, with friends of former Bears kicker Kevin Butler badgering Jauron with weekly questions regarding the team’s interest in the 37-year-old.
Butler, whom the Bears cut during the ’96 exhibition season, even went so far as to fly his own want ad banner over Soldier Field during a game last month.
If all else fails, the placekicker from Schaumburg High School might be available. Brian Huffman kicked a 56-yard field goal this season and regularly puts kickoffs through the uprights more than 60 yards away as he did Saturday in the state quarterfinals.
But the Bears are likely to take the semi-conventional route and pick from among Baker, Nittmo, Gowins and Nedney.
Nedney, a left-footer, hasn’t kicked in a regular-season game this year and was 13 of 19 last season for the Cardinals–6 of 12 from 40 yards and beyond.
Nittmo’s last year in the league was ’97, when Tampa Bay cut him in training camp. Also a lefty, he made nine of 12 field goals for the New York Giants in 1989 and kicked for the Buffalo Destroyers of the Arena League last year.
Baker never has attempted a field goal in an NFL game and has been in training camps with Dallas, San Francisco and Miami. This year, he played with Edmonton of the Canadian league, where he was 20 of 28 before being released during the season.
Both Baker and Nedney can kick off, also a problem for the Bears this season with punter Todd Sauerbrun’s sore shoulder restricting him. Although Sauerbrun handled kicking duties in the preseason when Jaeger was injured, Jauron said Sauerbrun has not been practicing his placekicking and is not a candidate for the kicking job.
