Robbie Gould has a firm case for being the greatest kicker in Chicago Bears history. He holds both the records for overall points scored and field goal accuracy. The guy was a lynchpin to their special teams for a decade. Seeing the way things ended for him back in 2016 was hard to watch. It's clear something wasn't clicking for him. So the Bears parted ways.
As it turns out with many players, Gould needed a change of scenery. A new challenge to reinvigorate his career. After a brief stop in New York, he's spent the last two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers. During his time away from Chicago, he's gone 82-of-85 on his field goal attempts. That's a 96.47 accuracy rate.
Now the 36-year old is scheduled to be a free agent this offseason and the Bears still need a kicker. There are many who are clamoring for them to bring the fan favorite back to where he belongs so he can finish out his career in navy blue. Thus far the team has been mum on the idea. As for Gould himself? He's been dropping some not-so-subtle hints that he is wide open to the idea.
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Robbie Gould sounds like a man who would love a Chicago return
Gould sat down with Dan Pompeii of The Athletic recently to catch up on what the kicker has been up to. Inevitably the conversation started with his love for the city. It's where he got his big break, it's where he met his eventual wife, and it's where he spent most of his NFL career calling home. He still does to this day.“You can travel all over the place and find great places to live,” he says. “But there is something to Chicago — the sports, the food, the city, the golf. There are so many aspects of the city of Chicago that we’ve come to love. At the end of the day this is home for me. I want my kids to be Chicago sports fans. The Chicago Bears, the Cubs, the Sox, the Blackhawks — they’ve all been unbelievably open armed to me and my family. It’s a place where you become a die-hard. We took my kids to their first Blackhawks game a couple of weeks ago and they went absolutely crazy. You hope one day they do that with their kids. This is where my career started. So no matter where I play, Chicago is always going to be home.”If that weren't enough, former Bears wide receiver Earl Bennett was down in Atlanta for Super Bowl week. By happenstance, he ran into his former teammate Gould during the festivities. Not only did Bennett declare his own wish for him to return, but the kicker himself had a rather telling statement too.
There are some potential roadblocks that get in the way of a Gould return. It seems likely that the 49ers will want to retain him after another good year. They could make sure of that by franchise tagging him. Then there's the matter of what the Bears will do with Cody Parkey and whether GM Ryan Pace wished to sign a kicker who turns 37 this year. Not to mention he'd have to outbid the 49ers having already sunk a ton of money into the Parkey flop. So while Gould may be open to the idea, it's far from a layup to get done.
