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When you keep playing messy, nervous, ligament-shredding, and terrifyingly teeter-totter games, it sure helps if your kicker isn’t any of those things.
When you know your entire season might never be anything except this, when you watch Nick Bosa hobble off the field, when you battle and bumble to the end of another four-quarter opera, it’s very different for the 49ers right now to have Eddy Piñeiro lining up to decide everything.
And Piñeiro knows it, too. He’s living it.
“I know I’ve gotta make the kick,” Piñeiro said after pouring in the game-winning 35-yard field goal as time expired in the 49ers’ 16-15 victory over Arizona on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium. “If not, I’ll probably won’t be here.”
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Straight to the point. Right on the money. No wobbles. Then a huge celebration at midfield with Piñeiro gesticulating a bit in the direction of Arizona’s sideline and then doing his best — but failing — to keep his teammates from briefly lifting him on their shoulders in joy and ridiculousness.
“That’s a bad movie,” Piñeiro said with a laugh. “I knew that was coming. I’ve just gotta stay on the ground.”
Not to be overly mean to Jake Moody, the 49ers’ constant crisis at kicker over the last two-plus years, but the end-game formula became much different after he was finally replaced two weeks ago.
On a team already filled with too many crazy variables this season, Moody was the wildest one. Now that he’s gone, the 49ers are still playing frantic games, they’re still coming down to the wire, and especially if Bosa’s knee injury forces him out for a long time, they will need every point possible.
But Piñeiro, after missing his first kick as a 49er last week in New Orleans (an extra point), has been perfect ever since with a ball that doesn’t move right or left — it just stays straight. Like it did for his 38-yarder in the second quarter to tie the game 3-3. Like it did on his powerful 51-yarder later that quarter to give the 49ers a 6-3 lead.
And then the winner: never a doubt.
Will he make every kick for the rest of this season? Of course not. He might go into a slump. But after the emotional journey Moody took them through every, this is a whole new breakthrough for the 49ers.
“I’ve hit like seven game-winners in my life,” Piñeiro said. “Obviously, this one’s extra special because of the whole kicking situation that was going on here and what the Niner fans went through, and what the team went through. It was a big kick.”
The 49ers are now 3-0 — winning by a cumulative total of 10 points — atop the NFC West, and they probably will have Brock Purdy coming back for next weekend’s home game against Jacksonville. After that, George Kittle and Brandon Aiyuk, among others are back.
It’s not going perfectly, and the margins are absolutely as narrow as it gets. That was not a pretty offensive performance on Sunday by the 49ers. And the 49ers might and probably will suffer more grievous injuries — obviously with the entire franchise holding its breath on Bosa’s MRI results Monday.
Which makes every close result even more important, and the 49ers have had just enough to finish off each game so far.
They were due to lose a game if they kept Moody much longer after he clanked a 27-yarder in Week 1. Shanahan and John Lynch finally accepted that and made the move — and picked the right replacement.
The 49ers didn’t need the biggest leg available. They just need somebody who’ll make the kick he has to — after Mac Jones has rallied back from a late interception to move the team in the final 1:46 inside Cardinals’ territory and finally, after a huge 20-yard short pass to Christian McCaffrey, to the right spot for Piñeiro.
Were you feeling good about Piñeiro in that moment, Kyle?
“We don’t have a lot of life experiences together, so …,” Shanahan said with a smile. “(But) I was feeling good with it and he definitely kept that going.”
Piñeiro followed the brief “Rudy” moment by happily breaking down the team huddle at mid-field with a “1-2-3-family on me!”
That’s a confident guy. That’s a 30-year-old who has kicked for four previous teams and who has the fourth highest field-goal percentage in NFL history — which, of course, begs the question, why was he available? And why didn’t the 49ers bring him last summer to challenge Moody then instead of trying Greg Joseph
OK, unanswerable, probably. The confidence, though, is right there.
“Seems like it, carries himself that way,” Shanahan said. “He was cool breaking down the team at the end. We’ve enjoyed him here in these two weeks. And liked how he’s handled himself.
“Definitely like guys more when they make kicks.”
The 49ers needed this victory. After the 6-11 crash last season, they needed this 3-0 start. If the injuries keep coming, they will need every win and every kick.
The 49ers were good enough to hold it together through some topsy-turvy moments in Seattle. They were good enough to win two games with Jones subbing for Purdy. They will need to be good enough to deal with whatever happens with Bosa — and Mykel Williams’ rising play so far is as good hint at how it’ll have to happen.
They let 2024 break them and the kicker problem was part of that. So far, the 49ers are fused together and figuring out how to win in 2025. And their new kicker is part of that, too.
“When he walks out there,” Trent Williams said of Piñeiro, “I’m pretty confident we’re going to win the game.”
Of course, the 49ers have no choice. They have to believe their kicker can win the game when all else has been decided except one last thing. They don’t want to just wish it. Right now, they sure can feel the difference.