The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have a new placekicker: fifth-year veteran Cairo Santos, who most recently played for the Los Angeles Rams and has a career field goal percentage of 84.1% in 113 attempts.
The Buccaneers signed Santos on Monday evening, hours after waiving Chandler Catanzaro, who had held the job for the first nine games of the 2018 campaign. Catanzaro missed two field goals in the Buccaneers' 16-3 loss to the Washington Redskins and had previously misfired on four of his 27 extra point tries.
Santos filled in for the Rams for two games when Greg Zuerlein was out due to injury. He connected on five of six field goal tries in that span and also was good on five of six extra point attempts. He had stints last year with Chicago and Kansas City and was good on four of five field goal tries and all 14 PATs.
Santos first entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent out of Tulane with the Chiefs in 2014. He beat out veteran kicker Ryan Succop for the job and played in all 48 Kansas City games for the next three years. In that span he hit on 85 of 100 field goal attempts, including seven successful kicks from 50 yards and beyond. In his career, Santos has made 85.1% of his field goal tries and 95.7% of his extra point attempts.
Santos is a native of Sao Paola, Brazil and he went to high school in St. Augustine, Florida. At Tulane, he was a consensus All-American in 2012 and won the Lou Groza Award as the nation's best collegiate kicker.
