Fromal's Kicking Notebook: Eddy Pineiro and Dominic Zvada inspire while Cameron Dicker falters

If you've been following along with our kicking observations throughout the 2026 NFL preseason, welcome back to the latest edition, which will cover everything from Eddy Pineiro's excellence to a certain long snapper making life tougher for his kicker. If you haven't, welcome to our attempt at furthering the analysis of this increasingly important position.

You've likely seen the final preseason highlights. No one in Week 3 could match Harrison Butker's 69-yarder from the previous week, but Cam Little joined Club 60 while Spencer Shrader punched his membership card a second time. A pair of standout rookies kept providing belief they'll be in three-point territory after a few first downs regardless of the starting field position. On the flip side, some of 2025's elites continued to show cracks during exhibition season.

It's our job to parse out what mattered from what happened.

The NFL kicking numbers that mattered in preseason Week 3

The deeper into preseason teams go, the more intent they are to separate the wheat from the chaff. At many positions, that means playing the third- and fourth-stringers to see what exactly they can offer. But at kicker, an increasingly large portion of the attempts go to the players expected to win the job, essentially making sure they won't squander their opportunities.

Week 3 produced some exemplary results for our more exclusive group of specialists. Thirty-four kickers (down from 39 in Week 1) combined to go 67-of-77 (87.0 percent) on their field-goal attempts and 48-of-52 (92.3 percent) on their extra-point tries. Both numbers rose from the previous week, though that's also partially due to an average field-goal attempt distance that fell from 43.4 to 41.3 yards.

My proprietary kick value added (KVA) metric, which looks not just at a kicker's makes and misses but also at the distances from which they kicked and the overall league's level of success from each area during the season in question, has the NFL as a whole earning strong overall marks. Based on 2025 standards, kickers earned -1.06 KVA in Week 1 and 3.83 KVA in Week 2, but they left those numbers in the dust by posting a collective 6.31 KVA in the final exhibition slate despite the downward-dragging displays by Tyler Loop and kickers named Jason. The individual leaders?

And on the flip side, the following five kickers struggled to find the center of the uprights:

Jake Bates also deserves a special shoutout of ignominy for posting -1.87 KVA and, though unquantifiable, the worst kickoff of the week. (More on that in just a bit.)

What we learned about NFL kickers in preseason Week 3

But as always, the raw numbers pale in importance to the kicks themselves. So let's dive into the storylines and observations.

Eddy Pineiro is solidifying his membership among the kicking elite

Eddy Pineiro entered preseason action in the No. 11 spot of my kicker rankings, and he may have been personally offended. Despite leaving a 61-yarder short against the Tennessee Titans in the opening week of exhibition season, he's been otherwise perfect, culminating in a 6-of-6 masterpiece against the Las Vegas Raiders to win a field goal-only battle with Matt Gay.

Those six makes weren't kicks that just danced through the edges of the uprights, either. Pineiro hit from 24, 25, 48, 51, 54 and 59 yards, and only the 59-yarder would've (barely) missed on skinny posts — practice goal posts that are nine feet wide rather than the actual 18 feet, six inches. That wasn't anything new, either. Throughout the preseason, Pineiro has showcased the accuracy that helped him stand out throughout the 2025 campaign.

The Niners handed Pineiro a four-year, $17 million extension this offseason, formalizing their belief in him as the long-term solution at kicker. He's done nothing but validate the decision, though games that actually count come with quite a bit more pressure than the preseason moments few will remember.

Fortunately for the Niners, that pressure didn't faze him in the slightest last year. Although he was shaky on extra points, missing five times in 41 tries (two blocked), he made 31 of his 32 field-goal attempts to finish fourth in KVA. I was skeptical that the accuracy metrics, derived from charting every kick, were replicable in 2026 because extra-point success tends to be a better indicator of year-over-year consistency, but that was before Pineiro kept striping it down the middle throughout the preseason.

To this point in his NFL career, the Florida product has put together a roller-coaster ride of success and failure. He struggled with the Chicago Bears as a rookie in 2019, finished just outside the KVA podium with the Carolina Panthers in 2022 and then proved perfectly mediocre throughout the rest of his Carolina tenure before landing in the Bay Area on a one-year deal. His accuracy on three-point tries has partially been cancelled out by the relative ease of his attempts and his 152-of-167 lifetime performance on PATs (-6.74 KVA).

But that accuracy peaked in 2025, as you can see above with a look at his rolling Accuracy Quotient (AQ) relative to the league average. AQ lives on a 0-100 scale and isolates a kicker's aim independent of leg strength, looking at how far left or right the ball crossed the threshold relative to the center of the uprights while also considering the tightness of the angular margin for error. As an important caveat, it's derived from manual kick-charting, so it uses estimated proximity to center (EPC) rather than an exact, to-the-inch number.

Pineiro's accuracy, unlike the league average, didn't dip noticeably as he moved further from his target, and that's been true yet again during the preseason. Just think about that 61-yard miss which, while short, was aimed between the uprights. It's eerily similar to his lone missed attempt last year, which bounced perfectly off the gooseneck joint for a 100 AQ even if he came up juuuuuuust short on the 64-yarder.

With an overall AQ of 89 on 32 attempts last year, Pineiro put together a body of work less accurate than only Harrison Mevis (91 on 19 attempts), Spencer Shrader (91 on 14 attempts), Evan McPherson (91 on 28 attempts) and Lucas Havrisik (92 on four attempts). It's looking more and more like that's a sign of great times yet to come for he and the Niners.

Dominic Zvada put the finishing touches on a confidence-inspiring preseason

Dominic Zvada has done everything possible both to win the New York Giants' gig and to fill the fan base with confidence that his big leg will play at the NFL level. Putting it through the uprights from 23, 46 and 53 against the New York Jets allowed him to complete a perfect preseason in which he went 5-of-5.

That's obviously a limited sample, but Zvada maximized the attempts he received. (It remains both disappointing and understandable that head coach John Harbaugh didn't let him try a 62-yarder into the wind in Week 1.) Only Cairo Santos (94 on five makes), Jason Sanders (95 on two makes) and Nick Folk (96 on three makes) posted AQs on their successful conversions higher than Zvada's 93.

To this point, Zvada has done everything asked of him. It's not enough to shed the label of inconsistency after he finished his collegiate career at Michigan in shoddy fashion, but his KVA progression showcases the ceiling just as much as the volatility:

The 22-year-old's appeal is obvious. He's handled pressure situations before. He has an absolute cannon of a right leg, as demonstrated with booming offseason makes on the practice field and 11 makes from 50-plus in college (career high of 56 yards, which he hit four times).

He should be entering his rookie season with the full confidence so often paired with job security.

OK, it's time to worry (a bit) about Cameron Dicker

"Don't worry about Cameron Dicker missing PATs in back-to-back preseason games. He'll be just fine," I wrote in last week's kicking notebook. How quickly the tables turn.

Dicker made his lone extra-point try — thank goodness! — but his two field-goal attempts were uninspiring. His 34-yarder from the left hash resulted in three points but was closer to the left upright than the Chargers would've liked, and that was still loads better than the 49-yarder he pushed wide right. Erraticism isn't a term typically associated with the NFL's all-time leader in field-goal percentage.

He may have a built-in excuse, at least for Thursday night's misfires. Dicker spent time in the blue medical tent, and head coach Jim Harbaugh indicated that "something" was bothering him. Pretty helpful and specific, huh?

Dicker has earned the benefit of the doubt, but the combination of injury obfuscation and on-field underperformance during exhibition season has to have Chargers faithful at least somewhat concerned. Then again, when I asked Bolt Beat's Jason Reed how worried he was about his team's kicker, he literally laughed at me.

Quick kicks

1. Andy Borregales had an ugly but successful conversion that side-spun left from 33 yards, but fear not: It got tipped at the line, and he was working with a new field-goal unit. Newly signed punter Matt Haack was serving as the holder and has yet to build up a rhythm with Borregales, though he successfully took two snaps placed way too far right and got them down for the kicker perfectly.

2. Doubt about Tyler Loop can't stop creeping in. Nor can the boos, apparently. He was already on thin ice with the Ravens fan base after his playoff-eliminating miss at the end of the 2025 regular season, and he did himself no favors by struggling with accuracy early in training camp and then missing a 49-yarder wide right in the preseason opener. Two more misses against the Washington Commanders leave him just 5-of-8 during the exhibition slate, and Baltimore may run out of patience quickly despite his big leg if he struggles when kicks count.

3. The New York Jets semi-committed to Jason Sanders by cutting ties with Cade York (the right decision), but Sanders wasted no time proving they need to evaluate contingency options. Leaving a kick short from 54 yards is brutal in today's game, especially when paired with kickoff struggles and a missed extra point. Maybe he's not fully recovered from the hip injury that kept him out in 2025. Maybe he is. Either way, his age-31 season is going to be short-lived if he doesn't get off to a hot start.

4. Dolphins long snapper Tucker Addington put together some troubling tape. A bad snap (outside and low) led to a delayed process and a block by Atlanta Falcons defensive lineman Chris Williams on a 56-yarder, and another bad snap (way inside) led to an ugly but successful 45-yarder. Riley Patterson may get credited with the miss and some subpar accuracy grades, but this wasn't on either him or punter/holder Bradley Pinion, who did his best to get the ball set properly and quickly.

5. Following last week's analysis of his glaring hash splits, Ryan Fitzgerald put two more attempts from the left hash (28 and 38 yards) down the center stripe for the Carolina Panthers. The confidence build should be significant for the second-year kicker as he looks to embark on a breakout campaign.

6. When a team brings in a veteran to compete against two struggling youngsters, he just has to avoid messing up. That's what Daniel Carlson did for the New Orleans Saints, making from 38 and 53 yards while Tanner Brown and Charlie Smyth were relegated to extra-point duties. But don't get ahead of your skis, Saints fans. He's coming off a 2025 season in which he sprayed kicks in every direction (especially from the right hash), and his 38-yarder came too close to the left upright for comfort.

7. Green Bay Packers rookie Trey Smack finished the preseason 9-of-9. My kick charting has his three attempts from the right hash (37, 43 and 59 yards) missing the horizontal center of the uprights by less than a foot. Combined.

8. Jake Elliott took his first two field-goal attempts of the preseason for the Philadelphia Eagles, and while makes are makes are makes, both flirted with the uprights. His 45-yarder never drew away from the right post, and his 56-yarder treated the left post like a tractor beam. The jury is still out after his significant struggles in recent years.

9. Jake Bates had the kind of nightmare game that could cause the Detroit Lions to think twice about the length of his leash in 2026. Not only did he misfire right on a pair of extra-point tries — "tries" as the operative word — but he also left a kickoff terrifyingly short of the landing zone, to the point that it almost hit the Indianapolis Colts players who were innocently standing there and assuming they were safe from incoming footballs.

Kick of the Week: Cam Little with the 61-yard chip shot

Breaking news: Cam Little has a big leg.

Last preseason, the Jacksonville Jaguars kicker banged one in from 70 yards. Then he set the official NFL record with a 68-yarder, tacking on a 67-yarder outdoors for good measure. We're not yet sure what he has in store for the encore, but Little is somehow flashing even more leg strength this year even without challenging those eye-popping distance numbers.

A 61-yarder is impressive in and of itself. Only Spencer Shrader (61), Ryan Fitzgerald (61) and Harrison Butker (69) matched or exceeded that distance during the preseason. But it's the ease with which he swings that right leg that really caught the eye against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Little looked as if he was lining up for a 35-yard chip shot, not a kick that would've been utterly remarkable in the not-so-distant past.

Jacksonville has itself a weapon. Maybe this is more game-breaking news than breaking news.

Honorable mention: Spencer Shrader's 60-yarder right down the center while embroiled in a battle for the Indianapolis Colts job certainly deserves lots of love even if it didn't come with the same degree of easy-power nonchalance.

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