Welcome to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Cairo Santos!

You may have heard a handful of references to the “kicking curse” casting a shadow over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers organization. The team has employed five different kickers since the 2016 season. The newest man selected for the job is Cairo Santos. 

“You just have to find the right guy and I am hoping to be the right guy,” he tells us on Wednesday afternoon inside the locker room. 

Santos admits he had his sights set on becoming a Buccaneer. 

“This past year was my first time being a free agent due to the injury so I was able to visit here actually last year and it is the top team that I wanted to land,” says Santos. 

He spent his first three NFL seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs. In 2017, a groin injury sent him to Chicago. He bounced from the Bears to the Jets to the Rams before landing in the Sunshine State. He joined the Buccaneers on his 27th birthday. 

“It was really special and, this year, I have had five workouts so my name was being called a bunch so I knew an opportunity would come,” Santos says.  

He now has the opportunity to kick for the team arguably twisted by a “kicking curse.”

“I don’t believe in that personally,” he says with a laugh. “I did not know the history that much but, sometimes, teams go through those phases.” 

The following kickers, Roberto Aguayo, Nick Folk, Patrick Murray, and Chandler Catanzaro, have been phased out of the organization. They only connected on 58 of 80 field goal attempts and they missed a total of nine extra points since the start of the 2016 season. 

“I have been cut before,” says Santos. “I know the feeling but, you know, being the guy to be called to step up, I have done that as well so I am looking forward to the opportunity.”

He went 5 for 6 in field goals and in extra points in two games with the Rams this year. He wanted to share this message with the fans. 

“I think my consistency is really what describes me the best so I am looking to come in and be myself and help the team hopefully heal the wounds that have been created,” says Santos.

News Channel 8’s Gabrielle Shirley spoke to Mark Cook at PewterReport.com about the kicking carousel at One Buc Place as well as the key players missing from practice on Wednesday.