The 49ers walked out of Sunday with a 36-30 win over the Cardinals, but Eddy Piñeiro’s missed extra points made the afternoon a little messier than San Francisco wanted.
Piñeiro, who had gone 8-for-8 on extra-point tries through the first two weeks, missed two in Week 3. Those misses helped open the door for Arizona’s late push and left the 49ers clinging to a two-point lead in the fourth quarter instead of the cushion they should have had. That was enough to stir up some uncomfortable memories for a fan base that had only recently moved on from Jake Moody.
San Francisco’s offense bailed him out in the end, but the kicker’s day still stood out for the wrong reasons. He did, however, connect on a 57-yard field goal right before halftime, and that kick mattered in the final result.
As FanSided’s Adam Fromal noted, Piñeiro’s profile has long been a strange one: steady on field goals, shakier on extra points. He wrote:
Last season, Eddy Pineiro finished fourth in KVA despite missing a league-high five extra points in a continuation of a career-long trend. In Week 3, the San Francisco specialist made a 57-yarder to close the first half but yanked a PAT outside left and then doinked the next one. Only Tom Dempsey, Joey Slye and Bob Thomas have worse career PAT KVA.
After the game, Kyle Shanahan leaned into the frustration with a little humor when asked about the misses.
"I was going to probably give him a game ball or something, but he ruined that with the two extra points missed," Shanahan told reporters.
The Fox Sports broadcast kept circling back to the misses as Arizona trimmed the gap, and it was hard to ignore how different that fourth quarter might have looked with a four-point lead instead of two.
For now, Piñeiro’s rough night doesn’t amount to a crisis. But in a tight NFC West, the 49ers know they can’t afford many more games where routine points turn into nervous moments.
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