Bears kicker Cairo Santos belts 57-yard field goal

Bears kicker Cairo Santos made a 57-yard field goal to end the first half. Had Sunday been a regular season game, the kick would have been the longest of his career.

“I was joking with him, we probably didn’t need that many yards,” coach Ben Johnson said. “We could have kicked it from backed up, the way he nailed that thing.”

Kicking in hot weather — the RealFeel temperature at kickoff was 100 degrees — helped. So did the work he put in during the offseason.

Santos worked on distance kicks by happenstance — he and other kickers found a practice field in Jacksonville that didn’t have sufficient fencing behind either end zone. They started kicking from deep to keep the ball out of a pond on one end and a road in the other.

Booker cooks

Defensive end Austin Booker had three sacks, the third of which was a strip-sack of Dolphins quarterback Quinn Ewers at his own 3-yard line late in the third quarter.

Booker said that when the rookie didn’t look to throw the ball away, he took two extra steps and tried to dislodge the ball.

Booker was one of the Bears’ main successes last preseason but totaled only 1 ½ sacks in 17 regular season games as a rookie.

“I feel like I’m being more consistent than last year,” he said.

New look

One major change came to Soldier Field with little fanfare: the Bears painted their end zone navy for the first time in recent memory. The south end zone is now navy with “Bears” painted in orange, while the north side has the word “Chicago” in orange. Both words are flanked by the NFL logo on the left and NFC logo on the right.

The Bears used a similar design last year when they played at Tottenham Hotpsur Stadium in London. Soldier Field’s end zones, however, have been simple for years, with the same current design put on unpainted grass.

The Bears also painted a memorial for late Pro Football Hall of Famer Steve McMichael on the 5-yard line on their own sideline — a navy football with his No. 76 inside — and wore a similar decal on their helmets. They debuted their Virginia McCaskey tribute patch for the first time.

Notes

• Linebacker Amen Ogbongbemiga (shoulder), running back Travis Homer (calf), cornerback Terell Smith (groin) and safety Major Burns (knee) left the game with injuries. Center/guard Luke Newman, a sixth-round rookie, was put in concussion protocol.

• The NFL’s replay assist system was expanded this season to review more on-field penalties. It worked Sunday, when officials threw a facemask flag on a Kyle Monangai run but picked it up after replay exonerated the Dolphins.

• The announced attendance was 43,537.