What we learned from Week 10: The Jake Moody experiment should come to an end

Things were supposed to be different after the bye week. That’s what we were told, at least.

The San Francisco 49ers, traditionally a second-half-of-the-season team, expected the turnaround to start after the week off. After losing three straight games to enter the bye week last season, the 49ers traveled to Florida and whomped the Jacksonville Jaguars by 31 points, leading to a 7-2 back half of the season.

Like last year, the 49ers traveled to Florida off the bye, but this time, their win was much less impressive. They squeaked a 23-20 Week 10 victory against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Technically, the biggest lesson learned from Sunday isn’t something we learned at all. It’s something the 49ers have been trying to tell us all year:

The 49ers are who we think they are

After a rocky 4-4 start to the season, the thoughts were that the bye week and Christian McCaffrey’s return would return the 49ers to the form we’ve grown accustomed to.

In Tampa Bay on Sunday–following the bye and with McCaffrey in the lineup–the 49ers looked the same as they did before the bye week. And at this point of the season, through nine games, we are nearing the point of no return. The 49ers are running out of games to return to their standard form, and maybe, at some point, we need to consider that this is just what the 2024 49ers are.

The 49ers jumped out to an early ten-point lead with Jake Moody’s first field goal. It marked the seventh game this season in which San Francisco has held a lead of ten or more points, with the 49ers now 5-2 in those games. However, only three of those games–the Jets, the Patriots, and the Seahawks—did the 49ers hold on to win by double-digits. The other four–Los Angeles, Arizona, Dallas, and Sunday against Tampa Bay–San Francisco either lost or allowed the opponent a chance to take the lead with the final drive.

Through nine games last season, the 49ers had margins of victory of 23, 18, 19, 32, and 31. Through nine games in 2024, the 49ers only have three wins by double-digits, with the largest being the 17-point win against the now 3-7 Patriots in Week 4.

Sunday was more of the same. The 49ers jumped out to an early lead against an inferior team before allowing the Buccaneers to keep themselves in the game. The red zone issues were still there on Sunday, with the 49ers scoring one touchdown on three trips. Special teams turned the ball over and cost San Francisco at least nine points in a continuing poor season from the unit. Even Kyle Shanahan continued his trend of questionable decisions, especially in fourth-and-short situations.

After a bye week of promises that the ship would be righted, the 49ers played the same game they had played in the eight games before. At some point, if the San Francisco 49ers keep showing us this is who they are, we need to start believing them.

The Jake Moody experiment should be heading to an end

Moody can be seen as the hero on Sunday. His game-winning 44-yard field goal moved the 49ers to 5-4. Had Moody just done his job earlier in the game, however, there would have been no need for any heroics to save the win.

A lot weighed on Moody as he lined up for the potential game-winner, and it wasn’t just the three missed attempts from earlier in the game. Moody also had Deebo Samuel on his case after his previous miss just a few minutes prior.

With three minutes left in the game, Moody had a chance to extend the 49ers lead to six, forcing Tampa Bay to respond with a final-drive touchdown instead of a field goal to tie. The 44-yard attempt went wide right, and Tampa tied the game with a Chase McLaughlin—former 49er—26-yard field instead of being forced to score a touchdown on a fourth-and-goal from the 8-yard line with the game on the line.

Sunday was the second time Moody has missed at least two kicks in a game, with the 49ers’ loss in Cleveland last year as the only other instance, a game San Francisco lost on a missed 41-yard Moody attempt as time expired.

Plain and simple: Moody doesn’t give that warm and fuzzy feeling that kickers of the 49ers past like Robbie Gould or Joe Nedney gave. Every field goal from Moody feels like its own adventure. Even his game-winner on Sunday didn’t feel like a sure thing until it finally went through the uprights.

Moody was one of three kickers drafted in the 2024 draft but the only one still with the team that drafted him. Chad Ryland has missed one kick this season for the Arizona Cardinals, a year after the New England Patriots traded up in the fourth round to select Ryland.

The 49ers flirted this season with the other kicker selected in the 2023 draft, signing Anders Carlson to replace Moody and Matthew Wright after the Green Packers released the kicker in the offseason.

The 49ers signed two kickers—Wright and Carlson—to fill in for Moody while he was on injured reserve, and the two combined to go eight-for-eight on field goals in three games. Brandon Aubrey and Jake Bates are both proving to be valuable kickers, and the Cowboys and Lions used zero draft capital to bring them in.

The 49ers, however, are attached at the hip with Moody after selecting the kicker with a top-100 pick, a selection that looks sillier and sillier with every missed kick.