Cody Parkey was 3 for 3 before lining up for the infamous 43-yard field goal attempt against the Eagles. This game-losing miss was not only literally an inch away from ricocheting through the inside angle of the upright, but another single inch from not being blocked in the first place. Either would have prevented the term “double-doink” from ever being uttered in the days following. Not to mention – but mentioning – had he not been iced, the kick he booted before the miss went straight down Broadway without a doubt, and with leg to spare.

From the Chicago Bear’s perspective, this situation was never supposed to happen in the first place. The Bear’s offense was supposed to score more than one pathetic touchdown against the Eagle’s 30th ranked defense. It failed. The defense was supposed to dominate enough to make up for the still un-blossomed offense. It failed. Cody Parkey almost absolved them all. Had it all gone an inch differently in just one of those two possible ways, Cody Parkey would have been carried off Soldier Field like Ditka. A hero. Headlines might have read: “Park-4!”, or “Ice Cold Cody”. People would have thought back of his regular season troubles as one thinks back of the memorable career of 1998 first-overall NBA draft pick Michael Olowokandi. Who? Exactly.

Hot take here. But, despite the vitriolic reactions of fans leaving Soldier Field, or those destroying TV’s at home, I’m taking a stand. I’m doing the right thing. The Chicago Bears had the right kicker on hand at Soldier Field on that fateful night. He was right there. It just didn’t work out. And that Chicago Bear’s kicker has a name.

Robbie. Fucking. Gould.

Sitting in the stands of Soldier Field with his family, Robbie Gould was there, but he wasn’t. The hero Bear’s fans needed was in the right place at the right time under the wrong circumstances. I am here to investigate, indict, and put on blast the real culprit for this entire fiasco: Chicago Bears General Manager, Ryan Pace.

Disclaimer: I get it, Ryan Pace has done a pretty damn good job revamping a sorry franchise into a likely perennial playoff caliber team. But that is entirely not the point. If you’ve read the Stathole Manifesto, you know not to appeal to authority for authority’s sake. The point here is, Ryan Pace – a proponent of analytics in football – disregarded basic statistics and made an incorrect emotional decision to cut Robbie Gould. As you will soon see, he fell hard for the psychological trap of loss aversion and failed to properly consider the data properly. Allow me to demonstrate how Ryan Pace is the one left kicking himself now.

Forget about Parkey. He wasn’t in the equation. To properly critique the decision to cut Gould after the 2015 season, it’s only fair to limit the analysis to information accumulated before 2016. So it would not be fair to mention Robbie Gould’s absurd 96.4 percent accuracy in his following three seasons. That is officially stricken from the record. So is anything else that happened post-2015 like being a perfect 6 for 6 in 50-plus yarders. It also wouldn’t be fair to mention that now with a career average of 87.8 percent, Robbie Gould is the second most accurate kicker in NFL history behind only Justin Tucker. It wouldn’t be fair to mention that Gould’s replacement, Connor Barth, would completely shit the bed in Chicago the following two years. And it goes without saying, it wouldn’t be fair to mention that Gould’s successor would single-footedly take them out from a real chance at a Super Bowl appearance. I won’t mention any of those things in this analysis because, as I said, it wouldn’t be fair.

But maybe, at the time, there was reason to believe Gould’s best days were behind him. If I were to tell you that Gould’s final two years as a Bear would rank as the 24th highest field goal percentage during that year, I’d be lying. It wouldn’t be for that year; it’d be for all-time. 24th. All-time. Basically, if the best 32 kickers of all time all played on teams in 2015, Gould would still be better than eight of them. Then, after the season, Ryan Pace would cut him.

Let’s play a game. I mentioned before that Robbie Gould’s career percentage is second only behind Justin Tucker. Below I have two plots that illustrate all field goal attempts with yardage and results for a given year. Can you guess which one is from Robbie Gould’s 2006 Pro Bowl year?