SANTA CLARA — Eddy Piñeiro and Jake Moody have never met, with Piñeiro walking in the doors of 4949 Marie P. DeBartolo Way not long after Moody was asked to leave.
“I’ve heard great things about him,” Piñeiro said in front of his locker on Wednesday after a large media scrum had dissipated. “It’s a hard business, and I just feel like a lot of teams don’t have a lot of patience. You’ve got to win now.”
The 49ers did win their opener, but ultimately determined that after Moody doinked a 27-yard field goal attempt off the upright and had two poor kickoffs, they had seen enough of the man they drafted in the third round (No. 99 overall) in the 2023 NFL Draft.
“You’ve got to make decisions in the best interests of the team, and ultimately Kyle (Shanahan) and I said let’s sleep on it after Sunday night, and we woke up on Monday and had a conversation, and we both felt it was the right direction to go,” general manager John Lynch said during his weekly appearance on KNBR-680.
When the 49ers visit the New Orleans Saints Sunday (10 a.m. PT, FOX), Piñeiro will take over place-kicking and kickoff duties.
Piñeiro, who turns 30 on Saturday, is the son of a Cuban father (and former professional soccer player) and Nicaraguan mother and grew up in Miami. He played in college at Florida and has five years of service with the Chicago Bears, New York Jets, and Carolina Panthers.
Despite a reputation for field goal accuracy (111-for-126, 88.1 percent), Piñeiro was out of a job and doing what specialists do during times of unemployment — waiting for someone else to fail and then waiting for a phone call.
“To me it’s strange, but I try not to look at it that way,” Piñeiro said. “I look at it as an opportunity. All kickers know each other. We don’t have backups. There’s only one of us. So we all pull for each other.”
It came as a minor surprise that the 49ers didn’t call Greg Joseph, who had engaged in a short-lived “competition” with Moody, kicking on relatively even terms. But the 49ers had enough injuries to believe they couldn’t use two spots on a 90-man training camp roster on kickers and terminated the competition in Moody’s favor on Aug. 4.
Lynch said Piñeiro’s accuracy, as well as a brief association with special teams coordinator Brant Boyer with the Jets in 2021, were the determining factors.
Piñeiro told the media he was weighing offers from the 49ers and Atlanta Falcons, who lost 23-20 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when Younghoe Koo missed a potential game-tying field goal wide right from 44 yards out in the final minute.
It’s easy to see why Piñeiro chose the 49ers. The job was his immediately, rather than being signed to Atlanta’s practice squad to compete against Koo. The Falcons instead signed Parker Romo, a former Minnesota kicker, to the practice squad while Piñeiro is the unquestioned kicker for the 49ers.
Piñeiro has been around long enough to know that being an NFL specialist can be a strange and confusing existence. He was signed to play the last five games for the Jets in 2021 with Robert Saleh as head coach and Boyer running special teams, went 8-for-8 with a long of 51 yards, and then was not asked back in 2022 when the Jets opted to go with the more powerful leg of Greg Zuerlein.
The place-kick holder for the Jets was punter Thomas Morstead, who holds those same duties for the 49ers and was watching closely during Piñeiro’s group interview.
Piñeiro signed with the Carolina Panthers, where he played from 2022 through 2024.
“I didn’t even miss a kick with the Jets. I played seven games with them, I’d been perfect,” Piñeiro said. “They cut me, and the next year I wound up going 94 percent with the Panthers. Strange business.”
The 49ers are, in a sense, turning back the clock to Robbie Gould, who was deadly accurate inside 50 yards and never missed a postseason kick, but lacked a big leg when it came to longer field goals and kickoffs. The 49ers moved on from Gould much the way a baseball team would let go of a medium-velocity strike-thrower in favor of someone who throws 100 miles per hour.
No one doubts Moody’s talent, but the pressure of being a third-round draft pick, his high ankle sprain in 2024, and a crisis of confidence ultimately led to his release.
Shanahan recalled lobbying his father, Mike Shanahan, to release Graham Gano with Washington. Eventually, they did so, in favor of Kai Forbath. Gano eventually made a Pro Bowl in 2017 with Carolina.
“Those are the things you think about,” Shanahan said. “I think Jake’s got a chance to have a hell of a career. We know how last year ended, we know everyone was looking at him, and obviously, when it gets to that point, you can see it affecting him from a mental game. Then you don’t have much choice.
“You’ve got to move on, and hopefully Eddy can come in here and do the job.”