Bears’ Eddy Pineiro expects team to sign kicker for offseason competition

Pineiro says he’s ready earn his spot again, and if there’s competition, “then we’ll go to war,” he said with a laugh.

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Eddy Pineiro is on the right track, but has much work to do to secure his future with the Bears.

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MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — At some point in the next few months, the Bears probably will sign a kicker.

Eddy Pineiro is ready for it.

He certainly made progress in his first season with the Bears and got the endorsement of general manager Ryan Pace at the end of it, but Pineiro figures he’ll have to fight for the position again this offseason.

“Last year I had to compete against eight different guys, so I don’t think that’s going to change,” Pineiro told the Sun-Times. “Hopefully it’s not eight again, but I definitely expect competition. If I’m the only guy, that would be a blessing, but I expect competition. They’ve always got guys to compete against you.”

And when he sees a kicker signing pop up on his phone?

“Then we’ll go to war like I did with Elliott [Fry],” Pineiro said with a laugh. “We’ll go back to war. Should be fun.”

Pineiro won a wild, prolonged competition for the job last year and dispatched Fry by mid-August. The Bears believed they found the man who could cure their kicker doldrums in the aftermath of the double-doink, and they surged with confidence when Pineiro made a 53-yard game-winner against the Broncos in Week 2.

It got rocky in a hurry. Pineiro pinched a nerve in his kicking knee in the weight room the following week and worried that it might cost him his job. Not only was his health in question, but the Bears could keep their seventh-round pick instead of sending it to the Raiders if they cut Pineiro that early in the season.

“I told the coaches, ‘Don’t bring anybody in. If I have to kick with one leg, I’ll kick with one leg,’ ” Pineiro said. “I worked so hard for the opportunity to have that spot and I didn’t want some injury to take that away from me. 

“It happened to me in Oakland . . . Of course that was in my mind. I didn’t want it to end like that again.”

Pineiro kicked through the pain without missing a game — the Bears had punter Pat O’Donnell handle kickoffs temporarily — and felt back to normal by midseason. 

Still, his performance was choppy. He opened the season 9-for-10 on field goals, then sputtered through a four-game stretch in which he missed four field goals and an extra point, and coach Matt Nagy was cautious about letting him try long attempts. That slump included a miss from 41 yards that cost the Bears the game against the Chargers.

Pineiro rallied to finish the season 9-for-9, closing it with a game-winner against the Vikings. His 82.1 field-goal percentage ranked 18th in the NFL and was an improvement from Cody Parkey’s 76.7 percent in 2018.

“The goal the whole time was to hit on a young kicker that we can grow, and we feel like we’ve done that with Eddy,” Pace said a few days later.

But one season isn’t enough to master cold-weather kicking. Pineiro, who grew up in nearby Kendall, Florida, is still adjusting to the temperature and the merciless winds of Soldier Field. Conquering that is the next step to solidify his standing with the Bears.

“Soldier Field takes people’s jobs,” he said. “My goal is for it not to take my job, so I’m going to keep fighting and practicing and keep going as many times as I can to kick at Soldier Field.”

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