Ben Johnson had a difficult decision to make. Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams had just taken a bad sack to push the team out of field goal range for Cairo Santos. He’d never hit one 58 yards in his career, let alone at Soldier Field. That left Johnson with three options: none of them ideal. He could go for it on 4th-and-15 to try to keep the Patriots off the field; he could punt it back to them in hopes of forcing a long drive with 1:39 left; or he could roll the dice on Santos. Ever the gambler, Johnson chose option #3. The decision shocked everybody, including Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel.
He thought the Patriots had played the situation perfectly. They’d saved time by giving Chicago a 1st down on 3rd and short, then got the sack on Williams to push them out of range. Every instinct for a normal head coach would be to punt the ball and hope the defense gets a stop. Johnson, as we’ve all learned for the past year and a half, is not normal. He asked Santos whether he wanted to try the field goal. Santos said yes. The veteran went out there and put it straight through the uprights.
Vrabel didn’t seem happy about it after the game.
Mike Vrabel has fair reasons to be salty.
Many people forget that the Bears weren’t the only team to give Santos an opportunity after his promising tenure in Kansas City fell apart. Vrabel, then with the Tennessee Titans, saw potential in him and signed the kicker in 2019. It was, for lack of a better word, a disaster. Santos went 4-of-9 on his field goal attempts that season. Tennessee released him after 5 games, leaving his career in limbo. A year later, he signed with the Bears and went 30-of-32 on his field goal attempts. He’s been here ever since.
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It must feel like dark poetry that Santos came back to haunt Mike Vrable like this. He gave the kid a shot in Tennessee and couldn’t do a thing with it. Then he goes to Chicago, a far tougher place to play, and seemingly can’t miss. That is the height of irony. It probably doesn’t help that his own kicker, Andrew Borregales, has missed 9 kicks since the start of 2025. Most people don’t realize that because the team has managed to win games anyway, but that is something Vrabel knows will be important.
This is a tale as old as time in the NFL.
There are many examples throughout league history of players bottoming out with one team only to resurrect their careers with another. Hell, Mike Vrabel is living proof of that. He was a non-descript backup for the Pittsburgh Steelers across four seasons and quietly left in free agency in 2001. That was where he joined the New England Patriots and became one of the fixtures of their first three Super Bowl championship teams. Sometimes it’s all about landing in the right situation.
For Santos, it might’ve been coming under the tutelage of Chris Tabor. He was renowned as one of the league’s best special teams coordinators in 2020. He’d worked with some excellent kickers such as Gould and Phil Dawson. His presence may have helped the struggling kicker rediscover his self-confidence. Sometimes that is all it takes. Santos has been a fixture in Chicago through some turbulent times ever since.
