Robbie Gould Just Dropped The Funniest/Saddest Ryan Pace Bomb
One of the big what-ifs for Chicago Bears fans over the past decade involves Robbie Gould. He established himself as the best kicker in franchise history since arriving in 2005. However, he’d gone through a rough patch in 2014 and 2015. New GM Ryan Pace decided it might be the right time to part with the 33-year-old since the team was entering a rebuilding phase. What followed was a run of utter misery for Bears fans that included Connor Barth, Mike Nugent, Cody Parkey, and Eddy Pineiro. It was a brutal stretch that cost the team lots of close games.
Meanwhile, to the shock of many, Gould enjoyed a career renaissance in San Francisco. In the eight seasons since leaving Chicago, he has a field goal accuracy rate of 88.1%. That is actually better than what he accomplished with the Bears. It was a bitter reminder that he wasn’t nearly as over the hill as Pace and former head coach John Fox thought he was. Yet the story doesn’t end there. Gould co-hosted Waddle & Silvy on Wednesday, where he delivered an inside scoop on something nobody previously knew.
Robbie Gould came so close to regaining his throne.
San Francisco placed the franchise tag on Gould on February 26th in 2019. He wasn’t happy about that and staged a contract holdout, eventually requesting a trade. That was when Pace likely stepped in, seeing if he could bring the fan favorite back to replace Parkey in the wake of his disastrous Double Doink in the playoffs. The 49ers refused, finally working out a four-year deal with Gould to keep him in San Francisco. Once it became clear to Pace that it wasn’t going to happen, he sent a 7th round pick to the Raiders on May 6th for Pineiro.
If nothing else, at least he tried to correct his original mistake. Still, the story reinforces how much regret the organization had about their Robbie Gould decision. It probably hurt even more when he helped the 49ers to the Super Bowl that season. Pace made several miscalculated roster decisions. It seems rather fitting the one that haunted him the most outside of the Mitch Trubisky pick was cutting a kicker.