Should the 49ers Still Have Confidence in Jake Moody?

Moody is saving his worst for the playoffs.
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Jake Moody hasn't ruined the 49ers season. Yet.

The 49ers' rookie kicker has missed four kicks in the past three games. He missed a 38-yard field goal attempt and an extra point Week 18 against the Rams. He missed a 48-yarder in the divisional playoff against the Packers. And he missed another 48-yarder wide right in the NFC Championship Game against the Lions.

Moody is saving his worst for the playoffs.

So far, the 49ers have overcome his mistakes, because they're much better than the other teams in the NFC. Still, they were heavy favorites over the Packers and Lions and beat each team by just three points. Which means the Super Bowl could be a close game, too.

The 49ers currently are one-point favorites over the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, and the over/under is set at 47.5, which means the oddsmakers expect the 49ers to win by a final score of roughly 24-23. If that's accurate, the result could come down to a Moody field goal at the end.

Should the 49ers let him attempt that field goal with the season on the line, or should they start doing what the Lions did all season and simply go for it on fourth down instead of kicking field goals?

It would make sense to be more aggressive on fourth down considering all the weapons the 49ers have on offense, including their quarterback, Brock Purdy, who's a tremendous threat to ad lib and scramble.

But I don't expect the 49ers to change a thing. Shying away from Moody would be an admission of weakness, and the 49ers won't acknowledge any weakness. They insist they believe in Moody.

We'll see if he warrants their belief.


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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.