Dallas Cowboys are courting trouble & a catastrophe with how they handled this spot

In a three-point game, the most important player for the Dallas Cowboys can rely on his degree in computer science from Notre Dame, and experience from being the 21st pick in the 2017 MLS SuperDraft.

The Cowboys promoting former Plano Senior high school and Notre Dame soccer star Brandon Aubrey to place kicker is the most Gil Brandt thing they’ve done since trying an ex-Baylor basketball forward at tight end.

(BTW, if you are wondering whatever happened to Rico Gathers, Google now says he’s an “American rapper.”)

Not too sure if Brandon Aubrey is destined to follow Gathers’ path towards a music career, because as of right now he is the latest kicker to hold his NFL franchise hostage.

The Cowboys, again, are not playing with a single match as they prefer an entire playroom stocked full of easily-reached flammable objects.

Between 2000 and 2022, the most frequent margin of victory in an NFL game is three points, 15.09 percent. The next closest margin is seven points, 9.2 percent.

Given those statistics you’d think that an NFL team would prioritize finding the 3-point specialist; alas, the process of finding a human being who can consistently kick a brown ball through two yellow bars spaced 18 feet, 6-inches apart is the most flawed, and impossible, position evaluation in professional sports.

“Prayer” and “Hope Like Hell” remain the most reliable methods of finding a kicker, which is how the Cowboys gave a guy who has never done it before in the NFL the job.

There is no way around the reality that the Cowboys don’t have a kicker they can trust. They just have to go through it, and “Pray” and “Hope Like hell” this horrible plan somehow works.

“I’m the last man standing so it is my job to lose,” Aubrey said after he made his first NFL appearance, on Saturday in the Cowboys’ preseason opener, a loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.

“I feel like going out there and competing every day, showing what I’ve got, it is my job.”

Correct. It is his job. Today. He’s also a kicker, a position where “today” may not mean an entire 24-hours.

In his debut, Aubrey made his one field goal attempt, a 29-yarder in the middle of the third quarter. Excellent work.

He was also 2-of-3 on his extra point attempts; I’m gonna need you to come in tomorrow, mmmK? Thaaaanks.

“It was good to get my feet wet,” he said, “and to see the ball go through the uprights; obviously some growing pains there on my missed extra point. Just a bit too fast.”

Then slow down. What’s so hard?

We could ask Brett Maher, but the Cowboys dumped him because he could no longer make extra points. Maybe he wasn’t slowing down enough.

Who knows? He’s a kicker, a position that attracts a peculiar sort.

The Cowboys brought in the veteran last season, despite his shaky resume. He won the job by inspiring confidence in his teammates, and coaches, and the Joneses, by proving he could make kicks from every distance.

Then, late in the season and into the playoffs, he lost the precious ability of making a kick from any distance; as soon as the season ended they threw him overboard.

They signed former Texas Tech kicker Jonathan Garibay in the offseason, but he was so not good they brought in Aubrey.

Aubrey was good in his two USFL seasons, where he made 32-of-37 field goals, and 57-of-59 extra points. He made all of his 35 extra point attempts in 2023 (the extra point is the same distance in the USFL and NFL).

The Cowboys desperately want to see this work as to avoid having to pursue the veteran route.

The veteran route is more expensive, and there is 0 guarantee the older guy who is well-known in fantasy circles will kick any better than the guy with 0 career points.

Few teams hate spending money on kickers like the Cowboys, but this is where they are: In a kicking hostage crisis.

Their means to solve it are Hope Like Hell, Prayer, and Brandon Aubrey.