Chicago Bears: 3 Players to watch in Preseason Week 2 vs. Giants

Eddy Pineiro, Kicker

Yes, we’ve all talked about the Chicago Bears’ kicking situation. It’s become a national topic. Some feel the situation may prevent the Bears from making a deep playoff run.

The Bears had a great season in 2018, but this season they have a tougher schedule. When you look deeper into last year’s schedule, they had 10 games that were decided by a touchdown or less. Of those games, the Bears won eight of them. Yes, that’s great, but a bounce here or a bounce there and that record could be a lot different.

We all know how the Bears’ season ended last season. With a tougher schedule, the kicker will be a great deal more important. It’s almost a guarantee that some games will come down to a kick, and having the right guy in there with ice in his veins is critical.

Eddy Pineiro and Elliott Fry are the guys (for now) competing for the important job. Both started out well with Pineiro having a higher percentage of made field goal attempts (83.9 percent to 81.4 percent).

While Pineiro led in training camp, one doesn’t make his money there. He only makes his money during a game. When the lights went on last week, Pineiro missed his 48-yard attempt and made a 23-yard attempt (basically a glorified extra point attempt).

Fry made his extra point attempt and hit on a 43-yarder. That was from the same distance that Cody Parkey missed in the playoffs. Panthers head coach Ron Rivera even did Nagy a favor by calling a timeout to ice Fry but he still nailed it.

To further complicate things for Pineiro was him talking about how the pressure of the competition is exhausting, per NFL.com:

"Yeah, it’s a little exhausting. Just every day you feel like, ‘Oh damn, if I miss this kick am I going to get cut? Are they going to trade for somebody else?’ It does get annoying…"

That sounds like a player who might be wilting under the pressure. That’s not what you want to hear from a guy who might need to make a big kick in the dead of winter in Chicago. He needs to have a good game against the Giants and keep his mouth shut.