An offensive drive stalls for the Florida Gators and the field goal unit takes the field. 85,821 fans begin to chant.
“Eddy! Eddy! Eddy!” Each rendition louder than the one before, not celebrating a successful kick, just greeting Florida’s placekicker.
Eddy Pineiro came to Florida as a YouTube sensation, kicking 70, 73 and 77-yard field goals in clips that instantly went viral. The Florida’s kicking situation the past three years have left the fans desperate for consistency and Pineiro gave them just that in the season opener. In his first college game, Pineiro connected on all three of his field goal attempts from 40, 49 and 48 yards. Last Saturday in his SEC debut, Pineiro showed he is in fact human.
The Gators’ first drive against Kentucky stalled leaving Pineiro with a 42-yard field goal attempt. Wide left, his first miscue, now we’re in unchartered water. How would Eddy react to a miss? His debut left that question unanswered. His holder, Johnny Townsend, told reporters during fall camp that Pineiro has no problem shaking off misses.
“Everybody reacts differently to [failure],” Townsend said when asked how he though Pineiro would rebound and react to a missed kick. “I’ve seen him in practice when he misses kicks. It kind of motivates him, which is really good. If he misses a kick he’ll immediately go and start to work on what he did wrong and how he can fix it.”
Pineiro would have to watch three more drives, the wait made easier by two touchdowns, for a chance at redemption. In the meantime, he would boot a kickoff through the uprights, again sending fans into a frenzy.
“On the kickoffs, he put the one through the goalposts, so that became a goal for him,” McElwain joke in his postgame press conference.
As Townsend predicted weeks ago Pineiro was able to shrug off his previous miss. McElwain sent his kicker out to attempt a 54-yard field goal. Pineiro pierced the uprights with room to spare, a career long field goal. Pineiro would get one more attempt on the night, a 48-yarder that never had a chance. The timing of the snap and his approach was off, Pinero kicked a Tim Wakefield knuckle ball that was left and short of its intended target. Pineiro did convert all six of is PAT’s on the night, making him 7-7 on the season.
Pineiro is now 4-6 (66%) on the season. His four converted kicks is just two shy of tying the number that three place kickers made (7) during the entire 2015 season. This was bound to happen. No kicker is going to convert on every attempt and Jim McElwain thinks his kicker will learn and grow from failure.
“He’s got to understand that, you know, what this is all about,” McElwain said Saturday. “But in a game like this I thought he grew up a little bit.”