After Robbie Gould gave the 49ers a victory Sunday with his 45-yard field goal, things got fuzzy.
His teammates celebrated with him and some lifted him to their shoulders, but after the game he had little recall of the moment.
“I have no idea what happened from the time I made it to the time I got to the locker room,” said the 35-year-old kicker now in his 13th NFL season.
The kick gave the 49ers their third straight win and fourth in the past five games, improving the 49ers to 4-10 with two games remaining. Even in those first nine games, however, Gould has been terrific.
In Sunday’s 25-23 victory over the Titans at Levi’s Stadium, Gould made all six of his field-goal attempts and became the first kicker in league history to make 15 field goals over a three-game span. He had five vs. the Bears and four vs. the Texans in the previous two games. Gould also has made 20 consecutive attempts.
For this season, Gould has made a career-best 36 field goals on 38 attempts – a career-best 94.7 percent success rate over a full season and better even than his strong career mark of 86.8 percent. He’s 4-for-4 from 50 yards or more, 16-of-17 from 40-49 yards, 10-of-10 from 30 to 39 yards and 6-of-7 from 20-29 yards (it was blocked).
“My favorite part of making a kick like that (the game-winner Sunday) is watching the other sideline go completely silent,” Gould told Carl Steward of the Bay Area News Group. “I usually talk to myself before I get ready to kick those kicks just to get myself excited.”
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Gould’s holder, punter Bradley Pinion, said Gould has “a killer mentality” when he’s setting up for a kick.
Gould was a good kicker for many years with the Chicago Bears and one partial season with the Giants in 2016, and has been to the postseason four times. But he says this year, on a franchise struggling to get back on track in the first year of new head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch has been his favorite, he told Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle.
“I think there’s something to be said about the brick-by-brick that Kyle and John and the organization have put together, pretty fun to watch it all kind of jell,” he said.
Gould and the 49ers will try to keep things going this Sunday with a Christmas eve matchups against the visiting Jaguars. Kickoff is set for 1:05 p.m.
