The five-year veteran is quietly having an impressive career
The Carolina Panthers are holding on to one of the NFL’s secret weapons: Kicker Eddie Piñeiro. He is, entering Week 12 of the 2024 NFL Season, the NFL’s All-Time leader in percentage of made field goals. He assumed that position after the previous leader, the Baltimore Raven’s Justin Tucker, continued a career worst season by only making one of his three attempts yesterday against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Piñeiro has a career 89.381% field goal conversion percentage against Tucker’s now 89.348%. Almost all of the top ten are active kickers, per Pro Football Reference, and Piñeiro, a five-year veteran of the league, is the youngest on the list.
He is 29th in field goals attempted by active players and 170th in career field goals attempted with 113 attempts. That puts him on pace to pass the career leader in attempts, Adam Vinatieri in approximately 27 seasons. So, yes, you’ll see pushback on this record arguing against Piñeiro’s volume. But it isn’t his fault he has played on one of the worst offenses in the NFL each year of his career. Over his past three seasons with the Panthers alone, we’ve witnessed his team rarely make it across midfield or, if they did, find themselves in a position where three points is irrelevant compared to the amount the team was often trailing by.
He has done record-setting work when asked. He has never missed a field goal under thirty yards and has made 86% of his kicks over thirty yards, including 11 of 13 attempts from 50+. Let’s not compare that to any other scoring metric for the Panthers during his tenure.
If Piñeiro gets the opportunity to increase his volume then he probably won’t stay on top of the leaderboard for the rest of his career. That doesn’t change the fact that he is still an elite kicker in the NFL. That’s a piece that the Panthers can’t afford to build their current puzzle without.