Eddy Piñeiro slept in a car the day his life changed forever. He’s now paving a new way

The older Eddy steered into Tuscaloosa. The younger Eddy looked out the windshield. It was a Friday evening in 2015, and the two Eddy Piñeiros were wrapping up a 15-hour trip from Miami in their rented Chevy Impala — ready to turn in for the day, quietly wondering if their lives were gonna be changed forever the next.

Eddy Sr. turned into a hotel parking lot. A 19-year-old Eddy Jr. spoke up.

“Ready to check in?” he asked his father.

“Um,” the father responded. “We’re sleeping in here.”

Eddy Jr. paused. In the car? Tonight? The next day he was set to attend a kicking camp at top-ranked Alabama. He had to be sharp, awake, perfect. He’d known what it was like to operate without much room for error, and that was particularly true this weekend: Eddy Sr. had borrowed $700 from his brother, Joel, for the trip — just enough to rent a car and pump gas and order fast food. The family was still reeling from the housing market collapse years prior, and now, with their savings wiped clean, they were living paycheck to paycheck, week to week, dream to dream.

“But don’t worry,” the father said. “I’m going to give you four Advils, so when you wake up in the morning, you’ll feel good.”

Again, the son said: What?!

“I’d never done that in my life,” Eddy Piñeiro told The Observer last week, recalling the details of that night with a laugh. That day might’ve been a decade ago, but to the Carolina Panthers’ placekicker, it feels like an entirely different life, an entirely different set of priorities and dreams, more mythology than lived experience.

The younger Piñeiro is now in his third season in Carolina. He arrived in the middle of 2022 to replace an injured Zane Gonzalez on the roster and played so well that the Panthers signed him to a two-year deal thereafter. Today he ranks as second among all field goal kickers in field goal percentage in NFL history at 89.623% — right behind Baltimore Ravens legend Justin Tucker (89.686%) and just ahead of Kansas City Chiefs deadeye Harrison Butker (89.130%).

Not only that: Piñeiro’s a trailblazer of sorts, too. He’s the first player in NFL history of Nicaraguan descent, and he’s one of a mere 45 players with a Latino background in the NFL as of early November, according to LA TV. Whenever Eddy visits home, his father says, Hispanic kids who grew up just like him in the same communities come out and watch him work out in wonder, as if he were their personal hero. He even started a kicking camp with his family this offseason — one that he runs free of charge.

But before he made the NFL or earned a college football scholarship or even knew the rules, Piñeiro was merely a kid from Miami, the son of a family that had lost everything, curled up in the backseat of a rental car fueled by the kind of dreams kids wish upon stars.

The two Eddys woke up the next morning and drove over to the field and waited to check-in. The father then looked around grew confused. Maybe a little nervous, too.

“Eddy,” the father muttered to his son, under his breath. “I think we might’ve picked the wrong camp.”

Eddy Piñeiro was born a soccer player

To understand why the Eddys thought they were lost on that day in Tuscaloosa, consider how little they knew of the football world. Consider, too, where they came from.

Eddy’s father was 9 years old when he arrived to the United States from Cuba as part of the Mariel boatlift in 1980. He grew up in Miami and lived his whole life in Florida. His wife, Grace, similarly immigrated to the U.S. when she was young.

The older Eddy was a soccer player. A wonderful one, too. He played for the USL First Division side Fort Lauderdale Strikers, a goal-scorer with a pristine touch. When he got married and had his three kids, Gicely and Eddy and Adam, it wouldn’t be unusual for the five of them to visit the grocery store and hear the quips that still ring in the younger Eddy’s head to this day: Your Dad is the best player I ever played with.

Younger Eddy and older Eddy were best friends. Grace calls them “the same person.” To no one’s surprise, younger Eddy wanted to be a soccer player — and that meant the father and the eldest son spending a ton of time together, to the tune of a three-a-day training regimen when Eddy Jr. was in high school. Once in the morning. Once with the main team in high school. And once with a club team. The highlights? Dad would force Eddy to kick 200 shots on each foot a day. Also: to begin each morning, he’d wake his son up at 5 a.m. to go on the kind of runs Rocky Balboa would: Eddy Jr. would file out onto 252nd Avenue with Eddy Sr. carefully following him in his truck.

It wasn’t until his senior year at Miami Sunset High School that Piñeiro ever put on a football helmet. By then, he was staunchly committed to soccer and heading into a year where The Miami Herald would dub him the paper’s Soccer Player of the Year.

He tried football a few times anyway.

His first try was in high school. The team’s kicker injured himself and the football coach inquired to the soccer coach if there was anyone he’d recommend. Piñeiro was top of the list. Three games. Wasn’t for him.

Next try was in junior college. He’d committed to Florida Atlantic University — one of the best college soccer programs in the country at the time — but an academic shortcoming led him to ASA College in Hialeah, about an hour north of Miami. The same thing happened there: Kicked one game. Didn’t like it. Moved on. But not before the ASA College coach talked to Piñeiro’s father and left a gaping impression on him.

The phone conversation went something like this:

Coach: Hello Mr. Piñeiro, I need to speak with you.

Eddy Sr.: Is everything OK?

Eddy told me he could hit it from the 40.

Listen, if he said he can hit from the 40, my son doesn’t lie.

Oh no. That’s not the problem. The problem is, this kid doesn’t know what he’s doing. He went to the 40-yard-line, turned the other way and hit a 70-yard field goal.

“He then said, ‘So if this was my son, I would never let him touch a soccer ball again, and just put him to kick,’” Eddy Sr. told The Charlotte Observer with a laugh. “I said, ‘OK Eddy, let’s give it a shot.”

Piñeiro’s father started fueling his son’s kicking potential. The elder Eddy got in touch with someone who runs one of the top kicking camps in the country, Chris Sailer — and Eddy’s leg blew Sailer away. A viral video of Eddy’s booming leg blew the rest of the country away, too. Sailer told Eddy Sr. that he’d called Nick Saban, and that Saban wanted to see Piñeiro in person.

Eddy Sr. paused. “Look, Coach,” he began, “if he doesn’t have a shot when he goes up there, we really don’t have the money.” Sailer assured him the trip was worth it. Eddy Sr. trusted him.

The father then asked his brother for $700 for the trip. The back of the check had a note addressed to Eddy Jr.: “Pay me back when you make it to the NFL.”

Back at Alabama …

Eddy, I think we’re in the wrong camp, son.

Back in Tuscaloosa, on that Friday in 2015, here the two Eddys were: tired, nervous, feeling a bit out of place. Eddy Sr. thought the kickers were linebackers. Perhaps it was because Piñeiro was not much smaller than his current 5-foot-11, 190-pound dimensions when everyone else wasn’t. Or perhaps it was a culmination of everything: of not knowing the game, of being new to kicking camps, of questioning the audacity that someone could rise this fast.

Eddy Sr. acknowledged there were multiple points when he asked if they should leave. He thought his son was done for the day, and if so, they had a long drive home. Eddy Jr. told his dad to stay. So they did. Eventually Alabama assistant coach Mario Cristobal talked to Eddy Sr., connected over their Cuban roots, spoke in Spanish. Eddy then “balled out.” The kid left with an offer from Nick Saban, and on the drive back, he was invited to kick for Florida, and got a scholarship offer there, too. He initially committed to the Crimson Tide before ultimately choosing to become a Gator. He wanted to stay as local as possible so his family could see him play.

You know the story from there: of his life in the NFL, from Oakland to Chicago to Indianapolis to Washington to New York to Carolina. Carolina’s the only place he’s spanned more than two seasons. His teammates love him here. So do his coaches.

Special teams coordinator Tracy Smith said he loves working with players with backgrounds in soccer. They’re less rigid in their technique and thus can be more experimental, he said — an important factor this year with a new kickoff rule that the Panthers are eager to experiment upon.

Also?

“A really good worker,” Smith said of his kicker. “Consistent. A great spirit. Shows up, ready to work on something every day.”

It’s not hard to see where that comes from.

‘Hey, you have a shot, too’

This offseason, Piñeiro came back home, as he always does. He visited family. He worked out every day. His brother, Adam, is in the middle of getting recruited to kick in college, too, so he’s been assisting him. He also started a kicking camp called Kick Pro Academy, which he launched this summer.

He’s proud of where he came from, of his unconventional path to the NFL.

He also wants to pave a better way, too.

“We run a kicking camp for youth athletes down in Miami,” Piñeiro said. “Bunch of Hispanic kids who can’t really afford to go to those big, expensive camps. And we do it completely for free. … I’m hoping I’m paving the way, and can teach and tell those kids, ‘Hey, you have a shot too.’ And that soccer translates into kicking. And if soccer doesn’t work out, kick. I always tell kids, ‘If you don’t get a scholarship in soccer, which is very hard to get, you have a shot to get it in football. So try both.”

Piñeiro was surprised when told how few players who identify as Hispanic were in the NFL. He added that he’s loved introducing his teammates to new music and food and dances — and he and Dave Canales have connected over their shared Latino heritage.

“It opens up the horizons to all these kids when they see that Eddy did it,” Eddy Sr. said. “His mom is from Nicaragua. His dad is from Cuba. And this kid is kicking in the NFL. Why can’t I? If you have the talent, and you work hard enough, it pays off. Why not? Everybody has an opportunity. That’s the reason we all come to America, isn’t it? We all have an opportunity to be great. To do great things. And to help out others.”

When Eddy comes home to Miami now, there are no 5 a.m. morning jogs. No runs down the middle of Country Walk all the way to the intersection at 152nd Avenue with his father’s truck idling close by.

“No more Rocky Balboa scenes,” the father said with a laugh. He was referring to that one scene in Rocky II, when Balboa runs through the city and turns around to see mobs of people behind him, reminding him who he runs for.