How Panthers kicker Eddy Piñeiro forgot about Atlanta to pave a season to remember
Eddy Pineiro doesn’t seem to remember much about his last trip to Atlanta.
He can recall what happened, of course. The missed go-ahead extra point with 12 seconds left. The missed game-winning field goal in overtime.
The difficult post-game interview in a despondent locker room, where a few of his teammates gathered around his locker in support as he answered tough questions — about his stat-line, yes, but also about a result that could’ve turned the Panthers’ season around.
What he doesn’t remember, though, is what happened afterward, or how that game impacted the rest of his season.
When asked how his teammates lifted him out of that difficult October day and through the rest of a great season, Piñeiro acknowledges that they did help but also smiles to avoid dwelling on that particular past: “I really don’t remember,” he said.
And that might be why he’s still here.
Piñeiro will return to Atlanta in Carolina’s Week 1 matchup against the Falcons on Sunday at 1 p.m., about 10 months since the last time he was at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. And after a cautious preseason where he dealt with leg soreness — he said he’s now “healthy, excited, ready to go” for field goals and kickoffs Sunday — he’s ready to be out with his team and get those first attempts of a new season under his belt.
There’s more to it for him than that, too.
“I’m just excited to get another opportunity to go back and be able to kick here, and be back with my team,” Piñeiro told The Charlotte Observer. He added, “Being a pro kicker, you’re going to need a short-term memory. Very, very short. As in the next kick. And whatever happens, happens. Then it’s the next kick, and the next kick. That’s just part of the job.
“That’s like every position. You being the quarterback, you throw an interception, you gotta have a short-term memory, you know what I mean?”
Memory is a funny thing in professional sports. The all-time greats can recall anything. Tom Brady’s recollection was so good his offensive coordinator nicknamed his brain “The IBM.” LeBron James has a similar superpower. Tiger Woods famously has what Golf Digest once called “something of a photographic memory” — one that can “recall yardages, club selections and reads years later.”
And yet, coaches preach platitudes every day that seem to dis-courage having great memories. Among those platitudes: “next play” and “don’t dwell on what you can’t fix” and the “control what you can control.”
Panthers punter and field-goal holder Johnny Hekker paraphrased another memory-related idiom from an all-time great on Wednesday: “Like that Babe Ruth quote, ‘Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.’”
“I mean, when you go back to one of those places that maybe you didn’t have one of your best games, there’s definitely that chip on your shoulder,” Hekker said of Piñeiro return to Atlanta this weekend. “Eddy used that game as a springboard to really have a great season. It was a moment to kind of refine our process, the way we approach the snap, hold and kick for him.”
Hekker is right. Piñeiro finished that season strong. After that game against the Falcons, Piñeiro went 19 of 19 on field goals and 18 of 19 on PATs. He ended 2022 with a 94.3 field goal percentage — one of the best figures in the league — and that was enough for the Panthers to lock Piñeiro down to a two-year deal this offseason.
“I’m not sure he missed more than a kick the entire rest of the season,” said long-snapper JJ Jansen, flexing a sharp memory of his own. “He responded fantastically, as we anticipated he would. He’s been great all year. In some ways, I think this will be kind of nice. Go there, Week 1, knock it out.”
Jansen is the longest tenured player in Carolina. He was acquired via a trade from Green Bay in 2009 and hasn’t left. He’s delivered the ball to some of the franchise’s most important kickers — from John Kasey to Graham Gano and others — and he can instantly recall his fair share of devastating special teams moments: the missed kick in 2010 against Cleveland, the blocked field goal in 2014 against Atlanta, countless gut-wrenching walk-off kicks that sailed true for the other team.
But he can also remember the good moments. That included the New Orleans game-winner last year in Week 18 — a redemptive strike through the uprights from Pineiro.
“Some of the historical perspective I think is helpful,” Jansen said. “Because every team has a culture and an energy around it. And this is a very healthy environment. So that’s been really a huge blessing, I think for everyone here.”
Vestiges of that game still remain. Hekker said he and Piñeiro didn’t do their routine “caddy and golfer” chat to discuss a kicking line before one of those cursed Atlanta kicks. They haven’t strayed from that ritual since.
Others on the team remember the loss but shrug when they’re asked about it. Said safety Jeremy Chinn of Piñeiro: “I know that we all believe in him and have all the confidence and faith in the world in him.”
“He had a bad day,” said special teams coordinator Chris Tabor, who has worked with Piñeiro in Chicago and Carolina and considers him “like one of my sons,” he said. “You could turn on golf, and someone’s having a bad day. That’s what happened. I think what he did after that kind of speaks to who he is, and we’re just trying to build off that.
Has anyone on the team rehashed that game with Piñeiro leading up to Week 1?
“Nope!” Hekker said playfully. “And probably won’t.”
That’s fair.
It might be futile anyway.
The saving grace for Piñeiro, for the rest of his 2022 season and maybe much more, was that he’d largely forgotten about it a while ago.
