Rest assured that there is no clear favorite in this Chicago Bears kicking competition thus far. Word continues to come out that every one of the eight names they've been working out at rookie minicamps has had his moments of struggle. However, when it comes to the money moment of each practice, only one of them has delivered both times.
For those who aren't up to speed, here's the situation. Head coach Matt Nagy, with help from special teams coordinator Chris Tabor and kicking consultant Jamie Kohl, organized the competition around a simple aim. At the end of each practice, with the entire team watching, they had one shot to make a long field goal.
The design was simple. See how they all operated when the chips were down. Just like a playoff atmosphere. Hence why it's not a coincidence the first distance chosen on Friday was 43 yards. The same Cody Parkey missed from in the postseason against Philadelphia.
The first day didn't go well for most with just two of eight kickers converting the attempt successfully. Those two were San Diego State's John Baron and Purdue's Spencer Evans. Day 2 was far better with six of eight making the kick. One of those two didn't though. It was Baron.
That means one man remains standing with a perfect 2-2 mark on those kicks.
Spencer Evans struggled early but continues to come through in the big moments
Evans is a fascinating story. He's trying to become just the second Purdue kicker to make it in the NFL, joining Travis Dorsch for that honor. In his four years of college, he was 27-of-36 overall on field goals with a long of 49 yards not. That's an accuracy rate of 75%. Not exactly stats that jump out at you. It appears that inconsistency followed him into camp.
Reports are he struggled a lot on the first day save for his clutch final kick. Then he rebounded on Saturday with a crisp afternoon and capped it with his second clutch delivery. What does this say? Evans isn't overly reliable to deliver standard kicks but he seems to handle the got-to-have-it situations well enough. All told? He may be the leader, but not by much.
His accuracy rate in general is average and he doesn't seem to be reliable from a distance. So he'll have to prove otherwise in the days and weeks to come.
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