The Bears Remain Moronic

The Chicago Bears. In addition to their inability to evaluate offensive talent, the Bears are well known for their stinginess. Examples abound, from tricking the Chicago Park District into renovating Soldier Field to hiring bargain basement coaches. Sometimes thriftiness is the right thing to do-- for example, the Bears were right to let the vastly overrated Bernard Berrian walk in free agency. But then they do supremely silly things, like, I don't know, making Robbie Gould the highest paid kicker in the NFL! Seriously, what? Gould is a pretty good kicker, but no superstar. It's true he's made the Pro Bowl during the Bears recent Super Bowl year, but that was largely because the Bears' offense stunk and he made a lot of short field goals. And his kickoffs have never been spectacular-- only 15 touchbacks on 228 career kickoffs. And the most damming statistic-- Gould has never made a field goal of more than 50 yards (an elite NFL kicker should nail 50+ yarders pretty often). Ouch. Gould is an NFL kicker, no doubt. But the highest paid kicker in the league? What a joke. Five bucks says Taylor Mehlhaff is outperforming Gould by the fall of '09.