Who Should I Start? Dustin Hopkins or Eddy Piñeiro

Tuesday, August 26, 3:18 PM

The Cleveland Brown released kicker Dustin Hopkin on Tuesday, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN. It appears that Andre Szmyt will open the 2025 regular season as the team's placekicker, although the Browns could still bring in more competition before Week 1. Hopkins will be let go after spending the last two seasons kicking for Cleveland, where he went 51-for-63 on his field-goal attempts (81%) and 41-for-46 on his extra-point tries in 31 total games. The final straw for the 34-year-old veteran might have been when he missed one of his two extra-point tries in the preseason finale on Saturday against the Los Angeles Rams. Hopkins entered training camp on shaky ground at the position after going 18-for-27 on his field goals in 16 games a year ago.

Saturday, December 27, 5:19 AM

San Francisco 49ers kicker Eddy Pineiro was six-for-six on extra point tries against the Colts in Week 16 and made two of his three field goal attempts. Pineiro was good from 25 and 38 yards out. His miss came on a 64-yard try at the end of the second quarter. It was his first missed field goal of 2025, making him 27-for-28 on the season. In Week 17, the 49ers host the Chicago Bears, with whom Pineiro made his NFL debut in 2019. The meeting between the two high-octane offenses carries one of the highest expected point totals of this week's slate, which could translate to Pineiro seeing a glut of opportunities to put points on the board. Pineiro, who ranks fifth among kickers in fantasy points per game, is a good option to plug into lineups for the final week of fantasy football.