Robbie Gould twice kicked a field goal to send a team to the NFC Championship Game — a 49-yarder in overtime to give the Bears a 27-24 victory over the Seahawks in 2007; and a 45-yarder in sub-zero temperatures as time expired to give the 49ers a 13-10 victory over the Packers at Lambeau Field in 2022.
Two exhilarating, career-highlight moments. But asked to choose the most memorable kick of his career, he went with the field goal against the 49ers. That was no slight to Bears fans. On the contrary, the fact that he beat the Packers at Lambeau seemed like the tie-breaker.
“I’ve always had a healthy respect for the Packers and that fierce Bears-Packers rivalry,” Gould wrote in a story announcing his retirement in The Players’ Tribune. “More than anything, though, I just absolutely love Bears fans. So to hit a huge kick like that, on the big stage, to continue my streak of never missing a kick in the playoffs and to also make all of Chicago happy in the process by taking down its rival? It was the best of both worlds.”
That’s why Robbie Gould has a special connection with Chicago that goes beyond his 11-year playing career. He gets it. He gets Bears fans. And he gets what it means to be a Bear. Even after he was unceremoniously cut by Bears general manager Ryan Pace on the eve of Week 1 of the 2016 season, Robbie Gould remained a Chicagoan and a Bear through and through.
And Gould’s departure as the best place-kicker in franchise history was indeed unceremonious. It happened late on a Sunday night, a day after the final cut-down to the 53-man roster.
“I got cut at 9 o’clock at night and no one was there,” Gould said last year on an appearance on “The Waddle & Silvy Show” on WMVP-AM 1000. “There was a trainer, John Fox and Ryan Pace. I didn’t get to say goodbye to anybody in the building for 11 years and you cut me at the very last minute in hopes that … I wouldn’t get a job, which wasn’t the case.”
Let the record show that Gould’s release wasn’t a total surprise. Gould was coming off two seasons that were below his standard. In 2015 had three rare misses in the clutch in back-to-back losses to the 49ers and Redskins — a game-winning 36-yarder as time expired in regulationagainst the 49ers, and a 50-yarder that would have tied the game with 1:45 left against the Redskins.
But Pace’s mistake was not in cutting Gould, but in failing to find a suitable replacement. He signed veteran Connor Barth, who made 29 of 40 field goal attempts (72.5%) in 2016-17. He then signed Cody Parkey to a four-year, $15 million contract ($9 million guaranteed) in 2018. Parkey made 23 of 30 field goal attempts in the regular season (76.7%), then infamously missed a 43-yarder that hit the left upright and crossbar with 10 seconds left against the Eagles in a 16-15 loss in the wild-card playoff game at Soldier Field.
But where cutting Robbie Gould ended up being the worst thing for the Bears, it was the best thing for Gould. In those three seasons, Gould responded with the best run of his career — making 82 of 85 field goals (96.5%) in the next three seasons with the Giants (2016) and 49ers (2017-18).
But even with all that post-Bears success, Gould will always be a Bear.
“From start to finish, I loved everything about my time in Chicago,” Gould wrote in The Players’ Tribune story. “Lovie Smith and Jerry Angelo created a team-first culture by assembling a locker room full of future Hall of Famers. To be able to go to work every day surrounded by guys like Brian Urlacher, Julius Peppers, Olin Kreutz, Roberto Garza, Charles Tillman, Lance Briggs, and dozens of other first-rate guys — it was the best football home imaginable.”
