October 7, 2019

Bears’ minicamp kicking competition off to a bad start

The minicamp phase of the Chicago Bears’ kicking competition got off to a bad start, and one of the contestants is currently out.
The team announced Wednesday that they waived Chris Blewitt, among those three kickers in minicamp competing for the project.
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 head,” Nagy said after practice, through the Chicago Tribune.
The most typical thought going through Bears fans heads was likely a picture of Robbie Gould and daydreams about what it was like prior to the group foolishly parted ways with the kicker three years ago.
After the Bears’ 2018 year finished on a double-doink from Cody Parkey, that had been subsequently cut, the kicking position has been in the forefront of their group’s offseason. After whittling down an eight-man (! ) ) Competition to three ahead of minicamp, Nagy is not pleased with every one of his competitors missing their boots in the first session.
“I mean, that is about as true as it gets,” Nagy said. “They had been 0-for-3 out there. For now, we can not have this. We are going to figure out this thing. But 0-for-3 today, no great.”
Blewitt yanked his miss broad left, his final hiccup in this competition.
The coach is clearly becoming frustrated with a situation that will not resolve itself by one of the participants taking a stranglehold of this job. Unless something radically changes in the following two days, this struggle-bus rivalry between the previous two standing will last into training camp at the end of July.
“They moved back-to-back-to-back, and all three missed,” that an exaserbated Nagy explained. “So they’re being assessed not just by (the media), not by me but by their teammates.
“Again, do you make it do you miss it? We missed three today. For us as evaluators, if they all went 3-for-3 now, we wouldn’t be speaking about this, right? But at precisely the same time, what’s real is they didn’t, and that is why we are speaking about kickers in this circumstance. Since we missed.”
With each practice miss the strain, and the annoyance of this trainer, mounts.
Cutting Blewitt in the wake of Tuesday’s debacle leaves Pineiro and Fry to fight for the task, unless the Bears make another move.