When [Bears](https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears) kicker Cairo Santos talks about Soldier Field, he does so as if it’s a monster with which he became friends. It’s dangerous and unpredictable, but he understands it. He describes this as a “relationship” and says it saved his career by elevating his concentration to a new level.
“It’s been good to me,” he said.
Santos’ phone is full of notes about temperature and wind from kicking in [the NFL’s most treacherous venue](https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears/2022/8/10/23300209/bears-moving-from-soldier-field-arlington-heights-grass-turf-conditions-cairo-santos-contract-stats), and he’s the most accurate kicker of all-time in that stadium at 89.7% and gave the Bears stability they hadn’t had since Robbie Gould.
He was an incredibly unlikely person to do that.
The Bears tried five kickers — including Santos for two games in 2017 — after cutting Gould and were set on Eddy Pineiro until he got hurt around this time in 2020. They called Santos as a fill-in, and he’s been their guy ever since.
It was a rough start, though, as Santos missed one in the home opener and again the next week on the opening drive in Atlanta, which has an indoor stadium. That one hurt. As he prayed next to a kicking net, he accepted that it could be the end of his career.
“I had a conversation on the sideline with God and just accepting that, ‘God, if the path you have for me is just to be a dad, then I’ll focus on that and move on, but if it is to still play in the NFL, help me,’” Santos told the Sun-Times. “I’ll never forget it... I put myself in God’s hands to point me in the direction he wanted to.”
He made a 35-yarder on the next drive — the first of a franchise-record 40 consecutive made field goals. Now, a player who was cut five times in three years leading up to this run, is going into his 12th NFL season and sixth with the Bears.
That pivotal opportunity was the intersection of seemingly separate strands of his life.
Bears coach Matt Nagy had been a Chiefs assistant when Santos kicked for them. Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub put in a good word for Santos to his buddy, Bears counterpart Chris Tabor.
General manager Ryan Pace had pursued Santos as an undrafted rookie out of Tulane when Pace worked nearby for the Saints. And while pandemic restrictions prevented Santos from working out privately for teams, Bears scout Francis St. Paul saw him at a group workout a week before Pineiro went down.
All he’s done is make kicks. He focuses on precision above all else, including over distance, so persistent speculation that the Bears need someone with a bigger leg doesn’t bother him. To be fair, he has made 21 of 27 from 50-plus yards over the last five seasons.
That said, he — accidentally — worked on distance quite a bit over the offseason while training in Florida.
Santos and a few other kickers couldn’t find a good practice site and settled on a public football field that had one flaw: The fence behind the goalpost was too close and too short. At one end zone, the kicks would splash into a pond, and at the other they’d land in a road.
Santos adjusted by simply kicking everything from deep. When he worked on shorter kicks, he would just judge whether they would’ve gone far enough.
“But then we started making those 55-yard, one-step field goals and it was like, ‘Oh wow, we’ve got to back up more,’” Santos said. “Then you’re making the 60- and 65-yarders. I saw an improvement in my ball striking and trying to kick the ball higher, so I’m excited to see how it shakes out.”
It’ll be harder at Soldier Field, but Santos is undaunted. For better or worse, he knows that place. And when it comes to any kick in that building, no one’s better at taming it than him.