Chicago Bears Stay or Go: Pat O’Donnell

Should the Chicago Bears extend Pat O’Donnell, or let him walk?

Pat O’Donnell has been with the Chicago Bears for four seasons. Should they extend the punter or let him walk away via free agency.

Stay

Pat O’Donnell has been one of the few reliable players on the team since 2014. He has survived a lot of coaching change and movement. None of that is his fault, and now, with a new special teams coach, you could expect an improvement in play. Kicker has always been worse than punter, and letting O’Donnell walk would be adding a punter to the long list of needs on this roster. The simple and safe move would be to extend him, and work with him, rather than to see a Robbie Gould situation happen to this new coaching staff.

Go

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Last season was not kind to Pat O’Donnell. For a group that was punting the ball a lot, he was not successful. They finished 21st in net yardage, 19th at pinning teams inside the 20, 24th in fair catches, fifth in most touchbacks, and second in most yardage allowed punting. A lot of touchbacks with few punts landing inside the 20, and few punts being fair caught in direct correlation to poor punting. That is not what the new staff needs to start their regime. There could be a reason to move on from Pat O’Donnell this offseason with some new decision making being made. We will see if O’Donnell is able to survive the change.