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Kyle Shanahan Says Jake Moody will Kick for the 49ers in Season Finale

This is a mistake.

Grant Cohn

Dec 30, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers place kicker Jake Moody (4) reacts after missing a field goal during the fourth quarter against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images
Dec 30, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers place kicker Jake Moody (4) reacts after missing a field goal during the fourth quarter against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images / Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images
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This is a mistake.

Head coach Kyle Shanahan has decided that Jake Moody will kick for the 49ers in their season finale this Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals. Shanahan announced this Tuesday on a conference call with Bay Area reporters.

Purdy has missed three of his past four field goal attempts dating back to Week 16 in Miami. This past Monday night against the Lions, Moody missed two field goals and an extra point, which means he cost the 49ers seven points in a game they lost by six. If they had simply benched Moody and replaced him with a competent kicker, the 49ers likely would have beaten the Lions.

Competent kickers aren't hard to find. There likely is one on a practice squad somewhere who could do a better job than Moody. This season, his 71.4 field goal percentage ranks 33rd in the NFL. Which means he's arguably the worst starting kicker in the league.

This Sunday against the Cardinals, the 49ers will be playing to win and Shanahan will be coaching to win. He should make a statement by benching Moody, signing another kicker and playing him instead. Because as long as Moody is the 49ers kicker, the rest of the team's effort could all be in vain. What's the point of selling out in a meaningless game if the kicker is going to miss multiple kicks?

If Shanahan wants to show his players that he's serious about winning, he won't let Moody attempt another kick this season, maybe ever.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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