Chicago Bears: Saying goodbye to Cody Parkey is easy

The Chicago Bears lost in the postseason in devastating fashion, and one of the key factors is to be released.

On Friday, Ian Rapoport reported that the Chicago Bears will release former pro bowl kicker Cody Parkey. It is weird to think about the fact that they are just releasing one of the most memorable players in franchise history. But why on earth would they want to do that?

Well, the answer is very simple. He is one of the main reasons their season was cut short in 2018-19. He had a chance to send the Bears past the Philadelphia Eagles on Wild Card weekend into the Divisional Round. But instead, he bounced a kick off of both the upright and the crossbar and sent the Bears home for the season. If he made that kick, it would have been the first time the Bears won a playoff game since 2010.

The thing about that kick is, it wasn’t random. He had a less-than-average season going to begin with. During the season, he missed seven field goals and three extra points. This made the infamous “double doink” a remarkable 11th missed kick of the season for Parkey.

Following the game, he appeared on the Today Show to talk about his team and the game vs the Eagles. This move was not received well by the Bears or the fanbase. It actually seemed like he wanted everyone to feel sorry for him.

The thing that was the most disturbing was head coach Matt Nagy’s response to the television appearance. He did not take kindly to the appearance at all. He said that the team always approaches everything as “we” and him appearing on national television was a “me decision”.

Now us Bears fans should view this news as extremely exciting. The team is on the rise from some very dark times. The defense is elite, they might finally have a franchise quarterback who could lead them to the promised land, and a kicker held them back.

So to that, we say goodbye to Cody Parkey forever. We never have to watch him kick for our team again. It’s that simple.

If anything, the only thing we can hope for is that whoever is the full-time kicker next season is rock solid and rights the ship. Things can’t get much worse than they were in 2018, otherwise the double-doink curse might creep into everyone’s mind forever. If a new kicker comes in and is successful, Chicago as a city that will embrace and love him. As odd as it sounds, a kicker could help lead the Bears to glory next season along with the defense and Mitchell Trubisky.

Parkey will likely find another job with another team to at least have a chance to succeed again, but he can take his Today Show appearance, field-goal-missing self to another team and he will never be a problem for the Bears again. We will never forget that he very well could have cost them a trip to the Super Bowl, but we can certainly move on.

It is sad that the writing was on the wall in the regular season and nobody did anything about it within the organization but as said before, onward and upward. Now it is time to make a real run at winning the Super Bowl in 2019.