49ers kicker dealt injury blow for Panthers clash

The story of the kicker Eddy Piñeiro to the San Francisco 49ers has taken a tough turn. Fresh off setting a franchise record with 17 straight made field goals to open the season and stabilizing a position that was a major issue in 2024, the veteran kicker now finds himself sidelined just as San Francisco prepares for another prime-time stage.

His accuracy, especially from 40-plus yards, had been a stark upgrade over last year’s production and a quiet pillar of the 49ers’ 5-2 start. That reliability will be missing when they face Carolina.

And now, the 49ers are listing kicker Eddy Piñeiro as out for Monday night’s game vs. the Panthers, Adam Schefter reported on X.

For a team that just rode its defense and Christian McCaffrey-heavy offense to a gritty win over the Falcons, losing Piñeiro is no small detail. Special teams had finally stopped being a weekly storyline after his hot start, and Kyle Shanahan could call games knowing that drives stalling around the 35-yard line still had a strong chance to produce points.

Now San Francisco has to pivot on a short week, adjusting its fourth-down decisions and red-zone aggression without the steady leg that had quietly become one of the roster’s safest bets.

Piñeiro’s absence also underlines how quickly things changed at the position in 2025. Back in September, the 49ers moved on from former third-round pick Jake Moody after repeated struggles and signed Piñeiro to a one-year deal, betting on his 88-percent career field-goal rate and his solid stint with the Carolina Panthers. That mid-month move was meant to close the book on last year’s kicking drama; instead, injuries have reopened the question at exactly the wrong time.

With a physical Panthers defense coming into Levi’s Stadium and the NFC race tightening, San Francisco will have to navigate at least this week without the kicker who had just kicked his way into the franchise record book. How cleanly they manage that adjustment could loom large in another close, low-scoring prime-time battle.