Monsters of the Midway Have a Monster Kick Line

Some NFL coaches seem well suited for work as advertising writers, considering all the jargon and phrases they develop.

Bears special teams coordinator Richard Hightower would be as adept at this as any of them. He has come up with a new term to consider for field goal kicker Cairo Santos in the cold, wind and precipitation of late-season football.

You've heard of monster movies, the Monster Mash and monster trucks. Now comes the "monster kick line." What other kind of kicking line would the Monsters of the Midway have?

It's sort of a double secret kick line special teams coordinators, head coaches and their kickers have and they especially need to know it when the weather gets bad.

"The weather impacts that more than anything," Hightower said. "That position more than any other position. So we talk about it."

The kick line is the maximum distance where kickers have told coaches they can feel comfortable kicking field goals. It's often marked on television screens for viewers in games, actually through a guesstimate.

"So in our pregame process we work kicks each direction and we always talk about a normal kick line, where we feel comfortable with a high degree of confidence that we're going to make the kick," Hightower said. "That's one element of it. 

"But there's also another element of it that we call a monster kick line. And that is, end of half, end of game situation where we say, hey, it's a lower percent chance to make it—maybe 1-out-10-percent chance to make it. And with wind being a factor, we were actually even outside of our monster kick line."

The entire issue came up in Cleveland Sunday when Cairo Santos could have attempted a 51-yard field goal starting the fourth quarter or a 55-yarder ending the second quarter, but coach Matt Eberflus chose instead to go for it. The first half ended on a failed Hail Mary pass and in the fourth quarter fourth down was a failed Justin Fields run/pass option run around right end.

The monster kick line and the regular kick line are not boundaries carelessly created but the Bears were beyond the monster line on both. Eberflus indicated this week they were actually beyond the regular kick line on at least one of those.

"It's something we talk about with Flus all the time," Hightower said. "It's something we talk about before a drive happens. It's also something we have a lot of practice data on. We have a lot of data and we know what Cairo is comfortable with going into a game, but that also changes. Weather impacts games and that also changes as we go into a game."

The weather can worsen or improve, the wind can change direction or severity and coaches keep talking about the kicking lines.

"And not only do we do it for Cairo, we do it for their kicker as well cause Flus has to call defense too," Hightower said. "It goes from the beginning of the week to pregame and then it also changes during the game. So if you guys see Cairo during breaks, he will go out and kick the ball or he will go out and kick at the second half and he'll let us know and we have a good gauge of that.

"So it's a really intricate process that evolves throughout the game."

The wind was blowing against the Bears both times. Santos' career long is 55 yards but not in the rain and wind.

"That was the very tough end in which direction we were going," Hightower said. "So we were well outside of the monster kick line."

Eberflus wouldn't discuss the distances of the kick line or monster kick line earlier this week because it's a secret.

Fans will have to imagine their own monster kick lines.