SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Robbie Gould is the hottest kicker in the NFL.And now he has every right to be hot under the collar.Beware, Jacksonville Jaguars. You just might be up against a force the likes of which you haven’t dealt with this magical season.Gould, whose five field goals nearly single-handedly took down the Chicago Bears in Week 12, one-upped himself with six straight, including the game-winner, Sunday against the Tennessee Titans.Sure, the Los Angeles Rams’ Greg Zuerlein has outscored him this season.But nonetheless, Gould has to ask: What else does he have to do to make the Pro Bowl team?Twenty straight field goals? Not enough.Forty-eight of his team’s 66 points during a three-game winning streak? Not enough.A 45-yarder as time expired to beat an AFC playoff contender? Still not enough.When the NFL got around to naming its NFC Pro Bowl roster, it went with the guy with the most points (158) on a high-scoring team over the league’s best one-man show on a club that has scored three touchdowns in the last three weeks, yet won all three games.So might the Jaguars see a Gould even further fueled than the guy who has been the NFL’s most dominant force in December?49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan just hopes the same guy shows up.And that goes for his entire roster.”You build off of that,” Shanahan said of the winning. “Everybody wants to be confident, but that only happens when you experience some success. We’ve won some more games than not recently, and the more you do that, the more confident you get.”Gould was one of four Pro Bowl alternates selected among the 49ers to complement their only sure-thing game participant — fullback Kyle Juszczyk.Running back Carlos Hyde has been decent, and tackles Joe Staley and Trent Brown have been steady.But none deserves the same Pro Bowl status as Gould.Heck, you could argue Zuerlein doesn’t, either.All Gould can do is have two more Pro Bowl-type performances, starting Sunday against one of the top teams in the AFC, the Jaguars.Coincidentally, 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who has directed the three straight wins, hopes to minimize Gould’s presence Sunday with a more complete offensive effort.”I’ve said this before: It’s probably one of the toughest areas in football offensively to execute,” he said of the red zone. “Everything has to go perfect down there. If you have a negative play, a penalty, it’s tough to overcome those in general, but especially in the red zone. Your percentages just go way down when that happens. We just have to avoid those situations.”
