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Will the 49ers Sign Veteran Kicker Matt Gay?

Unfortunately for the 49ers, Jake Moody was even worse than Gay last season.
Grant Cohn|
Indianapolis Colts place kicker Matt Gay (7) misses a field goal Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, during a game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
Indianapolis Colts place kicker Matt Gay (7) misses a field goal Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, during a game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. | Christine Tannous/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

A veteran kicker just became available on the free-agent market.

The Indianapolis Colts released Matt Gay on Thursday. Should the 49ers sign him to compete with Jake Moody and possibly replace him next season?

Gay, 31, was the Buccaneers' fifth-round pick in 2019. In 2021, he went to a Pro Bowl with the Rams. But in the past two seasons with the Colts, he has made just 82.1 percent of his field goal attempts despite playing his home games indoors. Even the above picture of him is a picture of him missing a field goal.

Unfortunately for the 49ers, Moody was even worse last season.

In 2024, Moody missed a whopping 29.4 percent of his field goal attempts. To be fair, he suffered a high-ankle sprain midseason and when he returned, he was noticeably worse. Still, his issues have seemed mostly mental since the 49ers drafted him in Round 3 of the 2023 Draft.

Moody has an extremely powerful leg and he was accurate and clutch in college. But so far in the NFL, he seems like a headcase who can't handle the pressure of being such a high draft pick. Maybe he needs a change of scenery. Or, maybe he needs competition to bring out the best in him.

If Moody is as talented as the 49ers believe he is, he should be able to beat out Matt Gay, no problem.

I like the idea of the 49ers signing Gay. What exactly do they have to lose?

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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.

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