Soccer standout to NFL secret weapon: Meet Cowboys’ historic kicker

Skip Holtz was going to follow John Carney’s recommendation no matter what when it came to taking a kicker in last year’s inaugural USFL draft. They were teammates at Notre Dame in the 1980s, with Carney going on to kick in the NFL for 23 years and Holtz becoming a coach who eventually landed with the Birmingham Stallions in the startup spring football league. 

Carney, who runs a kicking academy based in California, had six names for Holtz. That was a problem, Holtz told his friend. The Stallions picked eighth in the 32nd round, the one designated for teams to pick kickers.

“(Carney) said, ‘Skip, I got one guy that could probably be better than all of them. But it’s hard for me to give him to you, because he’s never kicked in a game,’” Holtz told USA TODAY Sports by phone this week.  

The player was Brandon Aubrey, a former first-round Major League Soccer draft pick trying to break into the professional ranks of a sport new to him.

Less than two years later, Aubrey is the kicker for his hometown Dallas Cowboys. The 28-year-old rookie was named the NFC Special Teams Player of the Month for October and has tied a record by making his first 18 field goals in the NFL.

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“I know an awful lot of people passed on him,’ Holtz said. ‘I was just excited to see him to get his opportunity and what he’s doing with it right now.’

Better with his head than foot

As a freshman on the Notre Dame men’s soccer team, Aubrey played 10 minutes in the national championship against Maryland, a 2-1 victory for the Fighting Irish. Aubrey was a starter for the next three years, earning All-American status as a senior.

At 6-foot-3, Aubrey scored more often with his head than his foot, former Notre Dame coach Bobby Clark said.

“He was good in the air, he was good at heading the ball. He could get on the other end of corner kicks, so he scored a lot of goals with his head,’ Clark told USA TODAY Sports. ‘But he also had a great shot. He really had a very, very good shot and he would take quite a lot of our penalty kicks. Not many goalkeeper’s (were) going to stop his shot.”

One time, Clark recalled, Aubrey scored against Indiana in sudden-death overtime by drilling a ball to the top corner from 30 yards out.

“I don’t think the goalie had any chance,” Clark said.

Toronto FC selected him 21st overall in the 2017 MLS draft, with hopes he’d be part of their long-term plans at central defense. But he spent that year with their United Soccer League team, Toronto FC II, and was released. He signed with Bethlehem FC, the Philadelphia Union’s USL squad, for the 2018 season and was again let go.

“He couldn’t have been far away,’ said Clark, who retired in 2017 and moved back to his native Scotland. ‘Because he played for the B-teams quite happily, but he never made that jump from college to (MLS).

“Lovely boy. Great lad. Quiet boy. He was a smart boy.”

Aubrey put his computer science degree from ND to use and became a software engineer.

“I never knew he kicked field goals,” Clark said.

“Quite glad that the football coach never heard about him. He might have pinched him.”

Two years of training leads to pro shot

Brian Egan is the National Director of Kicking for One on One Kicking, which trains punters, kickers and long-snappers at all levels, from Pop Warner to the NFL. Aubrey showed up at one of Egan’s free high school camps in Frisco, Texas, in 2019.

“Obviously, figured out pretty quickly he wasn’t in high school,” Egan told USA TODAY Sports.

Aubrey explained his soccer background and what he was looking to accomplish.

“We just came up with a plan and started training,” Egan said.

That meant Aubrey drove from his job at GMC three times per week to Frisco for training sessions that lasted 90 minutes to two hours. The first focus was refining Aubrey’s kicking form. Egan wanted him to build the muscle memory of kicking a field goal, so there were lots of dry repetition drills. Then Aubrey would hit 40 to 55 balls per workout.

“It’s kind of like a pitcher in baseball … you don’t want to over-kick your guys, especially somebody like Brandon, who’s learning,” Egan said.

For someone who could have stayed in the engineering world and left his athletic career behind, Aubrey had the respect of Egan from the beginning.

‘The drive that he had, I really believed in him,’ Egan said. ‘I’m going to take you as seriously as you take the craft that you’re doing. He showed up every time when he said he was going to show up. He said what he was going to do. Ultimately, it’s hard not to root for and pull for a guy like that.

‘I really wanted to honor that and make sure that if he’s going to show up and put in the work, I’d be right there with him.’

Once he reached a certain level, Egan said, they sent his film to Carney. Aubrey attended a free-agent kicking event to see how he stacked up against the competition.

Near perfection in the NFL

The Cowboys signed Aubrey in early July, not long after the Stallions won their second straight USFL title. During that span, Aubrey was 32-for-37 on field goals. He was a perfect 35-for-35 on extra points in 2022.

But on the dreary night of Sept. 10 in New Jersey, Aubrey pushed the first regular-season extra point of his NFL career wide left.

Holtz couldn’t believe it.

‘I was like, ‘Oh my God, are you kidding me?” Holtz said.

Dallas had moved on from kicker Brett Maher primarily due to his extra-point implosion against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFC wild-card round. The inexperienced kicker could have followed a similar fate. Instead, he made both of his field goals and all three extra-points the rest of that game and has not missed since.

“His talent, his demeanor, his attitude – he’s such a likeable guy, because he’s so low-key, he’s one of the guys,’ Holtz said.

Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy has said that Aubrey reminds him of his former kicker with the Green Bay Packers, Mason Crosby. After cutting Aubrey’s training camp competition, Tristan Vizcaino, in August, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said the team was ‘comfortable going into the season with him.’ In seven games, Aubrey has connected from beyond 50 yards three times, including a 58-yarder against the Los Angeles Rams

“He is really stroking the ball at a really high level right now,’ McCarthy said Sunday. 

It took a while for the Stallions to know what they had in Aubrey. Their practice field had no goal posts, and when they did arrive, they were college-sized uprights. Players would lock arms the length of the cross bar, and those on the line held their arms up to be uprights.

‘We had no idea what we had, really, until we got into the first game when we could see Brandon kick under pressure,’ Holtz said. ‘And he was money.”

Aubrey earned the goodwill of his Stallions teammates by being his humble, outgoing self, Holtz said. But his athletic background helped him fit into the locker room.

“He was a soccer player. He played in college. He played in MLS. So it’s not like he was just a kicker,’ Holtz said. ‘He was an athlete.

“When he decided to (kick), I think he took a lot of competitive juices from when he was an athlete and brought that with him as a kicker.”

Egan, who like Holtz grew up a Cowboys fan, said that Aubrey’s soccer career not going as planned has given him a chip on his shoulder for his second act.

‘It’s been amazing, just seeing where he started to where he is now,’ Egan said. ‘Going from training for two years straight, not knowing if he’d ever have the opportunity to play professional football, to getting signed by the USFL, to play there at a high level for two years, and now being a Dallas Cowboy. It’s been a heckuva ride and just a joy to watch.’