CHICAGO — Cody Parkey, you’ve got company. Lots of it.
One hundred and three wannabe NFL kickers on Saturday tried to kick a 43-yard field goal outside Goose Island’s Fulton Street taproom — and all 103 of them failed.
It was the brewery’s powerful defense of Parkey, the Chicago Bears kicker who missed a 43-yard field goal on Sunday that would have beaten the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL playoffs.
Parkey’s miss was partially blocked by an Eagle defender.
A skeptical Goose Island challenged “armchair kickers” who “sit on a throne of potato chips and vape pens” to do better than Parkey.
The winner would get tickets to any NFL game in the country, as well as airfare and lodging.
People lined up Saturday morning to get a chance. The brewery erected a goalpost in the street, put down astroturf for the kickers and let them take a shot at the field goal.
Then the snow started falling.
The very first kicker promptly slipped on the falling snow and fell on his bottom to the cheers and laughs of the swelling crowd lining the street.
There were more failures as well. Guys kicking it into the chain link fence separating the fans from the kickers. Guys slipping on the falling snow and nearly hurting themselves. One guy got booed for wearing an Aaron Rodgers jersey. Another for wearing a Minnesota Vikings jersey. (That guy practically missed the ball after taunting the jeering crowd).
Ultimately, no one could do it.
Several kickers came close. A man in a Brian Urlacher jersey sent one right down the middle, but came up about eight yards short, the crowd estimated. Another man, the 94th kicker, had the distance but just missed to the left. No one hit the goalpost, like Parkey did. Most, in fact, came nowhere close.
If the Bears are going to bring in competition for Parkey next season, they’ll need to look elsewhere.
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