LAS VEGAS – This dawned on me about halfway through our Countdown To Kickoff pregame show here Saturday night at Allegiant Stadium.
Our TV setup was on the Cowboys sideline, near the end of the bench and adjacent to the net the kickers use to warm up during the game. And here comes this hat, sliding into my peripheral vision while we were on the air, that was retrieved by Brandon Aubrey, the Cowboys' second-year kicker.
Here we were, nearing the end of the second pregame show, getting a chance to interview the likes of Jerry Jones, Mike McCarthy and Will McClay. Eight segments a show, two shows, a total of 16.
Last preseason at this time, Aubrey was a weekly topic, questioning how confident these Cowboys were in potentially starting the season with this neophyte kicker, a 28-year-old rookie who never kicked in high school or college. Never really heard of him until Dallas signed this Notre Dame scholarship soccer player following the USFL championship game when Cowboys former kicker and assistant special teams coach Chris Boniol texted me with, "You guys signed my guy."
Do what?
His guy, Aubrey, the second-year kicker for the Birmingham Stallions, two-time USFL champs. Boniol their special teams coach and obviously the kicking one, too.
Boniol told me this Aubrey guy was the real deal, that if he could handle the competition, he just might be someone special.
Well, while there was competition early in training camp, the Cowboys decided to eliminate the competition on Aug. 7, cutting Tristan Vizcaino so they could give all the practice reps and preseason game opportunities to Aubrey to properly evaluate this guy.
Aubrey would convert two of his three attempts in the three preseason games. The miss came from 59 yards but also one of the two makes was from 59 yards. His kickoffs were top quality. The Cowboys rolled the dice. Named him their kicker. What were the odds, snake eyes staring them dead in the face.
What he do?
Came up roses, converting 36 of 38 field goal attempts, having started the season making an NFL record 35 straight to open a career. His only two misses? One was blocked in the final regular-season game. One bonked off the upright in that same game. Near perfect. And this near perfect included nailing 10 of 10 from from 50-plus yards, including one from 60 yards.
The makings of a Pro Bowl first-year NFL kicker.
What a luxury.
And really the only two times it seems his name has come up this summer is after McCarthy sent him out in the first preseason game to attempt like an unheard of 65-yarder that came up short – he tried too hard and didn't hit it with his usual umph.
Then with just four seconds left in that game against the Rams at SoFi, here came Aubrey scurrying off the field up the tunnel into the locker room, knowing he needed to rush to LAX for a flight home to be there in time for the birth of his first child the very next day.
"The game ended at 4:39 (p.m.), and I got to the airport at 5:13," he says, and home in time for the birth of his son Colton.
Then Saturday night, with McCarthy pushing the envelope coated with two scoops of gall, he sends Aubrey out in perfect kicking conditions to attempt a 66-yarder with but one second left in the first half from the Raiders' 48-yard line. No Hail Mary here. But you ever seen how skinny the width between those uprights seems when the ball is put down 6 yards behind the 50-yard line? In fact, walked off the 66 yards here at the practice field in Oxnard. Took me 84 steps.
Pffft. Crushed it from 66. Would have been good for sure from 70, where Aubrey has previously proclaimed he's made it from in practice.
How good was that kick, giving new meaning to Route 66?
If this had been a regular-season game, Aubrey would have tied the NFL record for longest field goal, Baltimore's Justin Tucker in 2021 bounced a 66-yarder off the crossbar to break Matt Prater's previous mark of 64 yards set in 2013. Found an unofficial account of the NFL preseason record for the longest field goal being 65 yards but couldn't substantiate a preseason record.
And, oh, by the way, there is a six-way tie from the previous record to that of 63 yards, first set by the Saints' late Tom Dempsey in 1970 and last matched by the Cowboys' Brett Maher in 2019.
Now, timeout, here's an NFL history aside. Dempsey was born with no toes on his right (kicking foot) and no fingers on his right hand, so he kicked with a modified shoe that was flattened with an enlarged rectangular toe surface in the front of his right foot to compensate for his deformity. With the Cowboys on their charter flight back after a 23-20 loss to the Giants, word spread about Dempsey breaking the previous NFL record for longest field goal set in 1953 by the Colts' Bert Rechichar at 56 yards.
Back then, the newspaper reporters would travel with the Cowboys to away games on their charter flights, and they scrambled up to the front of the plane to ask Cowboys president and GM Tex Schramm what he thought of Dempsey's record kick with the ball placed down on the Saints' 37-yard line since back then the goal posts still were on the goal line.
Tex, in typical Tex raspy voice, groaned something like, "Well, he had an unfair advantage." Oh, boy, big story. And when the Cowboys PR department found out about Tex's answer, he was asked if he wanted to retract his politically incorrect but arguably reasonable answer about a man handicapped with no toes. Tex stood his ground.
The stories were written and, oh, did Tex catch hell the next morning. He later apologized. But as usual, Tex once again was ahead of his time because in 1977 the NFL added a rule that "any shoe that is worn by a player with an artificial limb on his kicking leg must have a kicking surface that conforms to that of a normal kicking shoe."
Wonder if Tex could have ever imagined a kick being made from 66 by one of his Cowboys?
"You can feel it off your foot," Aubrey said about the kick. "It feels like nothing is there, it has no resistance. It pops off your foot. It stays on your foot for like a half a second and then it just flies."
Boy, fly it did, and you could tell from the moment he struck the ball he had hit it solid. And even though from up high – really high – in the Allegiant television booth, could tell Aubrey had really nailed it. Could tell he had the distance. Just a matter if the ball would fade.
No, it did not. And in deference to Fort Worth born-and-raised writer Dan Jenkins, it was "dead-solid perfect." Judging where the ball landed, would have been good from 70, hitting the stands wall beyond the goal post.
With no artificial aid either.
Actually, no surprise either. You know, last year throughout training camp we would scramble to get in position to chart every Aubrey kick from whatever distance to see how many he would make; to try to judge if the Cowboys knew what they were doing going with a no-name kicker with only two previous years of actual football experience. Well, now we get into position to see if he's going to miss one.
Can't make this stuff up.
And now Papa Brandon can celebrate by presenting the ball that might as well have been traveling on Route 66 to one-week-old Baby Colton, appropriate questions certain to be asked in due time about the history of his first football.
