Man I can't believe how many changes have happened in this kicker battle. See posts one and two if you need to catch up.
Today the Bears made a move to further help their kicker position, trading a conditional 2021 7th rounder to the Raiders for Eddy Piniero. The pick goes to the Raiders if Piniero is on the Bears active roster for five games. Otherwise it doesn't...so Piniero for nothing. Conditional trades are weird.
So who is Eddy Piniero? He was an undrafted free agent out of Florida who was with the Raiders last preseason. He made all three of his field goals as well as his one extra point, so he's the closest to NFL experience that the Bears have on their roster at the kicking position right now. He was placed on the injured list with a groin injury before the season began though, so he never actually kicked in a regular season game.
That being said, he's supposedly quite good. He was rated as one of the top kickers in the 2018 draft, and was probably going to start for the Raiders before his injury. In two college seasons, he went 37/43 on field goal attempts, a very solid 86%. So you have to figure he's the favorite in the Bears kicker race now. I'll switch up my rankings to put Bryant first (Because proven veteran), Piniero second, and Fry third. Blewitt is a distant, distant, distant fifth. Behind Casey Bednarski, because I want that dude to kick all the field goals.
Weird trade. Does that include preseason games? Maybe the Raiders were gonna cut him anyways.
ReplyDeleteDoesn’t include preseason. And I would guess they were going to cut him, as their kicker is young (second year) and was ranked even higher than Piniero last year (Carlson was actually drafted by the Vikings, cut after a few misses, then signed with the Raiders and was awesome.
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