LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Robbie Gould isn’t the first member of his immediate family to earn a living kicking a ball and the Bears four-year veteran hopes that he isn’t the last.

While Gould’s father, Robert, played pro soccer with the St. Louis Steamers from 1980-83, his younger brother, Chris, is a place-kicker at Virginia who’s entering the NFL Draft.

“I think he’s got the tools to be in the National Football League,” Robbie said. “He’s got the leg, the swing, the technique and the mentality that a NFL kicker needs.”

Chris Gould made 80 percent of his field goal attempts last season at Virginia.

Chris Gould converted 16 of 20 field-goal attempts (80 percent) as a senior, a vast improvement after connecting on 11 of 19 tries (57.9) as a junior. He made all five of his attempts in a 22-20 win at North Carolina last Sept. 15 and converted 5 of 5 tries from 40 or more yards on the season after making just 4 of 12 tries from that distance as a junior.

“He understands what it’s going to take to play in the NFL,” Robbie said. “Hopefully he gets drafted in the later rounds. He knows that he might not [stick] with the first team. But he knows he’s got to go in there and compete and show that he can play in the NFL, kind of like me. I think he’s taking that approach. He knows he’s got to work harder than the next person.”

Chris Gould played in a Texas-versus-the-Nation all-star game, but is not ranked among the top kickers in the country by most draft publications. Robbie, however, received even less recognition after making 7 of 13 field-goal attempts as a senior on a poor Penn State team.

“When you go [4-7], you’re not going to get a whole lot of publicity,” Robbie said. “But he’s out there. He’s on the board. He played in an all-star game and he did really well and was very consistent and I think that’s what a lot of teams are looking for—someone who’s consistent with the mentality that they can make every kick, and that’s exactly what he thinks.”

Chris is inspired by his brother’s success. Entering the NFL as an undrafted free agent, Robbie was cut by the Patriots and Ravens before developing into an All-Pro kicker with the Bears. He earned a spot on Chicago's 53-man roster in October 2005 after being summoned for a tryout while working at a friend's construction company.

“The advice he’s been giving me is just keep working hard and do your best and even if you do get cut from a couple teams, it could still work out,” Chris said. “Other than that, he said once you get there, you’ve got to keep working hard to stay there because everybody wants your job. They want to be where you’re at.”

Chris would have loved to have traded places with Robbie on Feb. 4, 2007 when the Bears battled the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLI in Miami.

“One thing that really gave me a lot of motivation to become a better football player was watching him play in the Super Bowl and seeing what an event that was and me thinking I’d really like to get there some day,” Chris said. “In college you don’t always have a great ideas of what it’s like to be a pro football player, but when you go watch your brother play on the biggest stage, you get an idea of how really exciting and great it would be to some day be a world champion.”

Three years apart, the Gould brothers were high school football teammates when Robbie was a senior and Chris was a freshman. But their most memorable athletic battles occurred in the driveway and backyard of their Lock Haven, Pa., home. 

“There’s not really one story that stands out, it’s just when you would go out and play basketball or soccer in the yard, you just remember the intensity and how competitive you were,” Chris said. “You played as if it was the Super Bowl or a championship game, and that’s the way it was every time we went in the yard.”

“We played a lot of sports together growing up, and that made us a lot closer,” Robbie said. “My brother’s a very competitive kid, and that’s what makes us not only the athletes we are today but also the kickers because we always want the ball at the end of the game and really whenever the game’s on the line.”

The backyard battles were special, but the brothers agree that nothing would be better than facing each other in the NFL.

“It would be a very unique situation, not only for the NFL to have two brothers doing it but also for our family,” Robbie said. “It would be kind of cool to kick against him.”

“That would be very exciting,” Chris said. “I know how competitive we are. That would be a dream come true, two brothers playing against each other. That would be a neat experience.”