Should Cowboys look for a new kicker after Brett Maher’s meltdown? | You Pod to Win the Game
Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson and Frank Schwab discuss Dallas Cowboys K Brett Maher’s disastrous performance against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday night, and debate if Dallas should be in the market for a new leg before its matchup with the San Francisco 49ers.
Video Transcript
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FRANK SCHWAB: The one thing we do need to talk about, one of the biggest individual player meltdowns I've ever seen in a playoff game. Brett Maher, four missed extra points. And when I'm sitting here talking about the Cowboys can make a Super Bowl run, and I do believe that, the one thing is, what if you don't have a kicker. He can't kick for them next week, right? Like, what do you think? I'm like, I don't know how you put him out there for that first extra point against the 49ers next week.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Him making the last extra point, to me, mattered. Like, I was like, OK, he might have saved himself here.
FRANK SCHWAB: After they passed a very easy field goal, though.
CHARLES ROBINSON: you're right, they did. They passed an easy field goal. But I understood why Mike didn't do it. But then Mike was like, OK, now, now we scored the touchdown, go ahead, trot him out. He kicked it.
FRANK SCHWAB: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE].
CHARLES ROBINSON: You could see Mike. You saw it. They cut to Mike. I wish there was a lip-reader because he clearly said something funny. Whatever Mike said, I'd like to know exactly what he said because it was something funny.
And I thought, OK, he-- I thought they did a good job in the broadcast because clearly, when he came out, when he went right the first two times, and clearly overcorrected, right? Like, you either went left-- I can't remember if the first two were left or--
FRANK SCHWAB: First two went right. The third one, yeah, he just went like crazy overcompensated.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, he absolutely overcorrected. Right. And so I'm like, OK. And then wasn't the fourth one-- it went over the-- literally the tip of the upright.
FRANK SCHWAB: Yeah, it hit the top of the upright.
CHARLES ROBINSON: And so you're like, OK, screwed up, overcorrected, got closer, and then finally made the last one. It's not great, but he did go through the entire balance of the season without problems. He had a really weird game.
FRANK SCHWAB: He was great the regular season. He was great.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, it was-- Yeah.
FRANK SCHWAB: Hit 90.3% of his field goals.
CHARLES ROBINSON: It was really weird. It was just-- it was like a really weird, bad game.
FRANK SCHWAB: Really weird.
CHARLES ROBINSON: I think you go through practice week, and maybe you bring in an extra kicker. Maybe you roster an extra kicker. And if he misses his first kick, you go, OK, that's it. OK, I'll give you one shot, and then if you don't make it, we got somebody else who we're going to have in the active roster to step in and be able to kick for you.
FRANK SCHWAB: Because you know-- I mean, if we get to next week, and they go out-- they score first drive, whatever, Zeke scores a 1-yard touchdown. Here comes Maher, and he misses it wide right, everybody in the world is going to be like, what are you guys doing. Like, you guys saw last week. He's got the yips.
And I don't know. We've seen-- I think back to Mason Crosby. How long ago was that? Five, six years ago, when he had one of the worst games you're ever going to see, just missing, and missing, and missing. He's still kicking for the Packers.
CHARLES ROBINSON: God awful.
FRANK SCHWAB: And still doing really, really well. And was this just a blip for a guy who, again, hit 90.3% of his field goals this year.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Who are you going to get, Frank?
FRANK SCHWAB: That's the thing.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Who do you trust?
FRANK SCHWAB: Who are you going to sign on January 17?
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, who do you trust?
FRANK SCHWAB: Who you're going to trust better. I get that. So that's probably why Brett Maher gets another chance. It's going to be a lot of pressure for him. I hope he does it because he has been a good kicker, and he had picked a bad night to have a bad night, national TV audience like that. But we'll see.
It's one-- look, you get into these games, you playing the San Francisco 49ers, or the Philadelphia Eagles the next round, whoever you're going to play, these games come down to field goals and kicks like that, and you can't afford it. So it'll be very interesting to see going forward if he can get that thing back on track, or even if the Cowboys just are so kind of scared by what they saw Monday night that they just pull the plug right now and say, we got to try something else. We can't trust him in this situation. It's very interesting to see going forward.
CHARLES ROBINSON: I would guess, let's see what the first practice looks like. If they run him out there, and they go, OK, do it. Let's go through all your-- let's do every setup. Every 10 yards, move it back. Let's see what it looks like. And if he looks solid in practice again and-- or, maybe they can even diagnose what happened. Just ask him, like what the hell happened, man. Like, this isn't you. It's clearly not you.
FRANK SCHWAB: They got a really good special teams coach. Yeah, they can-- for people who don't know this, no kicker in any game, going back to when they started tracking it in 1932, has ever missed four extra points in a game playoffs. Playoffs, regular season, anything. We are talking about 90 years of history. Brett Maher's the first of his four extra points. Like that's-- ooh, it was a bad, bad night.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Let's be honest. It was a wild day. The fourth that he missed was so damn close that I'm even willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. The third that he missed was clearly-- so when I look at 3, 4, 5, 3 was an overcorrection. I could see why he missed that because he just straight up overcorrected. He knew what he was doing wrong, and he went too far. The fourth was right there, and then the fifth, he made it. So to me--
FRANK SCHWAB: It was interesting to see, after the third one, Dak is on the sidelines, and like he's pissed. And I get it. Like, we just drove all the way downfield. We should be up 21-zip by now. It's Tom Brady on the other side. We're giving away points.
So but you're probably right. The coaching staff handles it well. His teammates are probably going to rally around him a little bit because, again, he's better good kicker, for not just this year, but for a few years. But it was just-- it was kind of crazy to see him meltdown like that in a big spot.
