Still kicking toward dream
Ex-Pitt specialist Blewitt’s name might not inspire confidence in his field, but he still has goal in sight
It reads at first like a bad joke, the kind that Chris Blewitt has been hearing since virtually the first time his right foot ever made contact with a football.
The Chicago Bears, teeming with young talent that led them to a 12-4 record last season, head into the NFL offseason looking to remedy an oftoverlooked position, one that helped end last season’s Super Bowl dreams in the cruelest fashion imaginable. With five seconds left in a first-round game against the Philadelphia Eagles, Cody Parkey’s 43-yard field goal bounced off one upright and then on top of the crossbar before falling short of its target, a sequence of events now infamously known as “The Double Doink.”
In that quest for a kicker, a hopeful final piece to a championship team, the Bears potentially are turning to someone whose last name is the very action they want that person to avoid doing, the thing that thrust them into this situation to begin with.
For Blewitt, there’s no punchline that comes with the situation in which he finds himself with the Bears; rather, he’s one step, one decision away from fulfilling a dream.
As the Bears begin organized team activities Tuesday, they’ll do so with three kickers on their roster, all of whom will be taking part in what, given the circumstances that created it, will be one of the most closely watched and scrutinized competitions in the NFL. In the middle of that action will be the 24-year-old who is the leading kick scorer in Pitt history and was, at this time last year, working as a flooring associate at Home Depot.
Regardless of how things
“I didn’t want to think 10 or 15 years later down the road that I left something on the table.” — Chris Blewitt, former Pitt kicker pursuing NFL dream with Bears
unfold over the coming days and weeks, Blewitt is appreciative of the opportunity he has before him.
“It’s surreal,” Blewitt said. “You come around and see guys you’ve watched a few years, even back when you were in high school. They embrace you as their teammate and you roll right into it. It’s like, ‘We’re a team right now. What can we do to get better?’ There’s that feeling of just walking into the facility and seeing everything. You’re like, ‘OK, it’s time to get to work.’”
In their far-reaching, wide-ranging search for a kicker, the Bears have a worthy candidate in Blewitt based on the resume he built in his time with the Panthers.
A four-year starter, Blewitt finished his career with more made field goals (55) and extra points (198) than any Pitt player ever, providing the program with a reliable, consistent presence at an all-important position over a four-year stretch from 2013-16. He was steady, scoring a point in a record 52 consecutive games, and brought a level of power that helped stretch the field for the offense, as his 56-yard gamewinner against Georgia Tech is tied for the longest kick in Pitt history.
What became maybe his defining trait, the one by which he remains most remembered, was a flair for the dramatic. Including the record-breaker against Georgia Tech, Blewitt kicked five game-winning field goals (with under two minutes remaining) in his career. None were more important or remain more famous than a 48-yarder with six seconds left to send the Panthers to a shocking 43-42 win at eventual national champion Clemson in 2016.
Following his graduation in the spring of 2017, with all of those accomplishments behind him, he faced a future as a specialist wanting to pursue a career in a sport where little, if anything, was guaranteed.
There were occasional glimmers of hope. The Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League called him inquiring about a tryout after their kicker got injured midseason, but plans ultimately fell through. The Steelers invited him to rookie minicamp in 2017, but he didn’t make the team. At one point, the Dallas Cowboys expressed interest in looking at him as a punter. It never materialized, but Blewitt said he would have embraced the opportunity, highlighting his desire to play professionally.
“If they needed me to be a slot receiver, I’ll do it,” Blewitt said. “If they want me to come in there and be a quarterback, I’ll be a quarterback. I’ll learn to throw the ball better. Any way I could get on the field, I’ll take it.”
As all of this arose only to fizzle, Blewitt did what he could during what was sometimes a trying wait. He became a fixture at Pitt’s football facility, lifting weights and kicking for what he estimated to be about four hours a day.
During that time, though, he also needed money, which prompted the son of someone in the construction business to apply at a local Home Depot. Blewitt wanted an experience he could get something out of, even if it was just helpful tips and tools he could use when he has a house of his own one day. His job, as he said, was more involved than most would think, as he would work the flooring section in the store, take calls, set up appointments and restock shelves, usually with heavy packs of tile.
“There’s no point in just giving less than you know you’re capable of,” Blewitt said. “I ended up enjoying it. My co-workers were great. There were just different things every day you could learn – patience, working with different kinds of people. It was fun.”
Last August, Blewitt moved back to his native northern Virginia, where he continued training and coached at Hayfield Secondary School in Alexandria alongside his former high school coach. As he did that, he continued to travel to camps and do whatever he could to remain on teams’ radars.
Though he was enjoying life back home, just as he had enjoyed his post-graduate experience back in Pittsburgh, he knew of the dangers of comfort and complacency.
“I didn’t want to think 10 or 15 years later down the road that I left something on the table,” Blewitt said. “I could have been worried about making just a little bit more money, but then you start making compromises and you’re really putting 80 or 85 percent of yourself toward pursuing football when you could have been giving 100 percent. That was my main focus. Football comes first; anything else is just secondary. It was like, ‘What can I do today to be ready for that call?’”
Eventually, that persistence paid off.
In February, he won the competition at kicking trainer Jamie Kohl’s camp in Phoenix, which caught the attention of the Bears, who brought him in the following month for a group tryout. Days after that, he signed with the team and became part of a modern-day oddity in the NFL – a feverishly discussed kicking competition.
It was a race that intensified in mid-March when the organization cut Parkey, Chicago’s starter last season, who missed the fateful field goal in the final seconds of that 16-15 wild-card loss to the Eagles on Jan. 6, a misfire that made someone already playing an expendable position that much more expendable.
As it stands now, Blewitt is one of three kickers on the Bears’ roster, alongside Elliott Fry, who also has no prior NFL experience, and Eddy Pineiro, who was acquired from the Oakland Raiders in a May 6 trade. He got to this point by surviving an eight-man competition in rookie minicamp in which hours of field-goal attempts were charted and electronically monitored, measuring ball trajectory and speed, among other things. Of course, given the vacant spot they’re vying for, the kickers were put into artificially pressurized situations like kicking into the wind or having to kick in front of the whole team at the end of practice, just as Blewitt did the second day of minicamp. He missed, but he responded almost immediately by making his next one.
When you’ve made a game-winning field goal in the face of more than 80,000 desperate, screaming fans in a place aptly called Death Valley, pressure can only be felt so much, as much as coaches try to simulate it.
“This is where we’re at,” Bears coach Matt Nagy said to reporters earlier this month. “This is what happened last year. This is gone now. How can we improve? Well, that happened to be the last play of our season. So now if you’re a kicker and you’re in the room, you’re going to feel uncomfortable. If you’re a player or coach in the room, you’re going to feel uncomfortable. So let’s go test it out now.”
Before the start of OTAs next week, there’s something of a waiting game for Blewitt, who has filled his time training, practicing, resting and, as he did one early afternoon in an empty theater, watching “Avengers: Endgame.” (He enjoyed it and, more impressive, avoided any spoilers before seeing it.)
There’s no firm timetable on when a decision will be made on a kicker, which means Blewitt’s life can profoundly change or his NFL experience could end at any moment.
That he’s even in such a position, though, is a reminder of the mentality, focus and diligence that got him to this point. If he doesn’t make the NFL, it won’t be because he blew it.
“Sometimes, I guess naturally, it can creep into some guys’ heads really quickly, like, ‘What am I doing this for?’” he said. “You’re still trying to put 100 percent of your effort every day towards this goal. It can get in guys’ heads sometimes if you don’t have a team or haven’t gotten a call in a little while. It’s all about keeping that mindset that this is working toward something. There are going to be some hardships. It’s not going to be glorious for a little bit. It takes some work to try to get in there.”