The San Francisco 49ers face an uncertain future at kicker but may opt to deploy an offseason roster tactic that almost always is never used on a special teams specialist.
A franchise tag.
This could apply to what the Niners are facing with their current kicker, Eddy Piñeiro, who's ticketed for free agency after joining the squad after San Francisco gave its previous kicker, Jake Moody, the boot after Week 1.
Or, the same tactic might be recalled as what the 49ers did with another former kicker, Robbie Gould, back in 2019 when he was heading toward the open free-agent market.
History has a way of repeating itself, doesn't it?
The Niners' decision to apply the franchise tag on Gould was a shocking one, considering the guaranteed money associated with the tag would make him an awfully rich player; far exceeding the projected value for someone of his caliber.
And, should San Francisco opt to do the same for Piñeiro, it'd cost a whopping $6.72 million.
That'd be a considerable raise over the $972,778 he earned in 2025.
Would 49ers use the franchise tag (again) on a kicker?
Of course, there's a caveat with the franchise tag in that it lengthens the negotiation window for a new contract to the middle of July. So, if the 49ers ultimately want Piñeiro to stay into 2026, they could apply the tag to prevent him from departing via free agency in March and with the aim of working out a new deal by mid-summer.
At the same time, the Niners received plenty of ridicule for tagging and then re-signing Gould to a lucrative contract back in 2019, even though his reliability was something San Francisco valued and subsequently didn't have once it turned to Moody in 2023.
So, how do the 49ers value Piñeiro?
The 30-year-old veteran's 96.6 field-goal percentage was tied for second best among all qualifying kickers last season, and it also marked a career-best year for him, too. As a pending free agent, Piñeiro would likely want to cash in on that somehow and certainly wouldn't want to accept a bargain-basement offer from the Niners.
San Francisco can recall its questionable approach with Gould, sure. And it might go down that road again, haunted by the Moody disaster but also complicated by the fact it can likely find a suitable specialist at a significantly cheaper cost, which is what most other teams opt to do.
The 49ers have been in this predicament before. How will they handle it this time?
The window to place a franchise tag on a player runs from Feb. 18 through March 4.