Kawakami: The 49ers’ exhausting, erratic, nonsensical Jake Moody era is finally over

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The 49ers finally judged Jake Moody like they judge every other player at every other position, as though his job were based on success or failure, not hope and blind presumption.

Like someone who could either be counted on or had to be cut.

The 49ers finally stopped overcompensating for Moody’s obvious deficiencies — the way they went ridiculously over the top last month celebrating his game-winning kick during the preseason. Full stop: the preseason.

Folks, that was kind of embarrassing for a franchise that should have more self-respect.

Let the record show, at least according to all reports, that on Tuesday — two days after Moody clanked a 27-yard try off of the left upright (a miss that could’ve cost the 49ers a key victory in the regular-season opener at Seattle), had another kick blocked, and messed up the kickoff twice — Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch at last bowed to inevitability and decided to waive Moody after two-plus extremely erratic seasons.

It should’ve happened early last offseason, immediately after Moody’s very shaky 2024 campaign, but no. It could’ve happened going into training camp, when the 49ers had Greg Joseph ready to go as an alternative. But no.

The fact that it didn’t happen Sunday night, right after the team returned home and Shanahan started conducting business for Week 2, or Monday morning, when other business was getting done, is a sign that Shanahan and Lynch were struggling with it even into this week.

The fact that the 49ers didn’t offer the name of the replacement to the national reporters who were tipped off about the Moody release is another sign of awkwardness.

But this whole thing has been awkward, from the moment more than two years ago when the 49ers used a valuable third-round pick to select Moody, decided that they wouldn’t have to worry about a kicker for a decade, then had to justify the pick to critics (and themselves) almost every day after that.

It got tiring, fast — but in an odd way, Shanahan’s lack of enthusiasm about all special teams probably gave Moody more leeway. Shanahan could see the talent every day in practice. And he didn’t want to give even 1% of thought to the kicker or replacing the kicker or making roster moves because of the kicker. So he just let it ride, presuming that Moody’s struggles — which, really, date back to his 2023 rookie preseason — were an aberration.

Even after Sunday’s clunker, when I asked Shanahan straight up if there was any question whether Moody would be the kicker this weekend in New Orleans, he responded the way he always did: “No question.”

Shanahan moved off the full certainty minutes later, and then again in his Monday conference call, which is a measure of both his initial instincts not to bother with the kicker and the moment when the accumulation got to be too much to fully deny.

Really, it feels like maybe Shanahan and Lynch were nudged into this by either the sense of inevitability (Shanahan was going to keep getting asked about this every time Moody missed a kick) or, even more powerfully, by a locker room that clearly and logically was losing faith in Moody. That clearly had no reason to keep faith in Moody — dating back to Deebo Samuel’s famous explosion last season when Moody missed three tries in the 49ers’ victory over Tampa Bay.

Postgame Sunday, after offering that he’ll always support his teammates, Nick Bosa said it pretty clearly: “Obviously, that position is very cut and dry, whether you’re getting it done or not.”

How could the 49ers keep going with Moody — who missed 11 field-goal tries and an extra-point attempt in his last 10 games with the 49ers and memorably had an extra point blocked in Super Bowl 58 — and say they’re doing everything possible to win games?

The 49ers changed the special teams coach last offseason. They changed the long-snapper. They changed the punter and holder (same guy). They discarded a slew of veterans, changed the defensive coordinator, and swore things would be different after last year’s 6-11 season.

Everybody was accountable, right?

They even brought in Joseph and started a very public kicking competition in camp — that the 49ers veterans were absolutely paying close attention to — but then quickly called it off when the injury toll at other spots meant that they couldn’t afford to carry two kickers.

That’s another time when they should’ve pulled the plug on Moody but didn’t.

I guess maybe they didn’t like Joseph much, either, because he wasn’t mentioned in the 49ers’ communications with national reporters Tuesday morning about discarding Moody. And NBC Sports Bay Area’s Matt Maiocco reported later that Joseph wouldn't be the next kicker.

Instead, the 49ers will sign veteran Eddy Piñeiro, who is 111-for-126 on field-goal attempts over parts of five NFL seasons. ESPN's Adam Schefter reported the team agreed to bring the former Panthers kicker in on a one-year deal.

Shanahan clearly doesn’t love this experience — he doesn’t want a kicking merry-go-round, he doesn’t want kicking questions every week; he just wants to send the kicker out there and trust that he’ll make the kick.

I don’t think Shanahan and Lynch necessarily held onto Moody this long just to prove they made a solid pick in 2023. I think it was about the psychology of the pick: Moody’s massive talent was worth the extreme amount of draft capital, which informed every decision after that.

Until now, they just couldn’t give up on a player who looks so good in theory. But again, that’s not the way any team should judge any player, especially a kicker. That’s not the way the 49ers judged Trey Lance, even after it cost three first-round picks to acquire him, once they had Brock Purdy on the roster. That’s not the way they’ve judged Dante Pettis, Trey Sermon, or any other number of high-draft choices who looked good on paper but fizzled in reality.

I give Shanahan and Lynch full credit for those recalibrations. Drafting is hard. Nobody gets it perfect. If you realized you’ve missed on something, don’t mess up the present by trying to justify an old, wrong decision.

But they definitely were messing with everything by sticking with Moody for as long as they did. The 49ers treated him like he was an established Pro Bowler, like any miss was just an aberration, every make was a justification, and any question about his job security after his latest wayward kick was not in sync with reality.

The 49ers treated Moody as though he had already proved himself. When, actually, he never did, and at least as a 49er, never will.