The minicamp phase of the Chicago Bears‘ kicking competition got off to a poor start, and one of the contestants is already out.
The team announced Wednesday that they waived Chris Blewitt, one of the three kickers in minicamp competing for the job.
During Tuesday’s session all three kickers — Blewitt, Eddy Pineiro, Elliott Fry — missed kicks from 40-plus yards, back-to-back-to-back.
“Whatever went through your mind went through my mind,” Nagy said after practice, via the Chicago Tribune.
The most common thought going though Bears fans minds was likely a picture of Robbie Gould and daydreams about what it was like before the team foolishly parted ways with the kicker three years ago.
After the Bears‘ 2018 season ended on a double-doink from Cody Parkey, who was subsequently cut, the kicking situation has been at the forefront of the team’s offseason. After whittling down an eight-man (!) competition to three ahead of minicamp, Nagy isn’t happy with each of his competitors missing their boots in the first session.
“I mean, that’s about as real as it gets,” Nagy said. “They were 0-for-3 out there. For today, we can’t have that. We are going to figure this thing out. But 0-for-3 today, no good.”
Blewitt yanked his miss wide left, his last hiccup in this competition.
The coach is clearly becoming frustrated with a situation that refuses to resolve itself by one of the participants taking a stranglehold of the job. Unless something drastically changes in the next two days, this struggle-bus competition between the last two standing will last into training camp at the end of July.
“They went back-to-back-to-back, and all three missed,” an exacerbated Nagy said. “So they are being evaluated not just by (the media), not just by me but by their teammates.
“Again, do you make it or do you miss it? We missed three today. For us as evaluators, if they all went 3-for-3 today, we wouldn’t be talking about this, right? But at the same time, what’s real is they didn’t, and that’s why we are talking about kickers in this situation. Because we missed.”
With each practice miss the pressure, and the annoyance of the coach, mounts.
Cutting Blewitt in the aftermath of Tuesday’s debacle leaves Pineiro and Fry to battle for the job, unless the Bears make another move.