For the 90 men who will attend Cowboys training camp in Oxnard in five weeks with an eye toward making the final 2024 roster, they know the grind is coming. They know the days will be long. They know the work will be grueling. They know that competition- and maybe the key to securing a spot on the team- can come from any of the athletes around them.
It’s a lesson one young rookie learned the hard way in 2009, when the baddest man at Cowboys camp was a first-year kicker.
David Buehler had a serious leg. Actually, the Southern Cal product had two of them. Trojans head coach Pete Carroll had offered him a scholarship to USC based, at least in part, on his 40 time, the fastest of any player at any position at the 2006 junior college scouting combine.
But the California kicker was also a gifted athlete. Standing 6-foot-2 and weighing over 225 pounds, Buehler was ripped, built like a true gym rat. In his first year at USC, he was actually listed as a fullback and safety, and he regularly played coverage on special teams while also serving as the team’s third-string boot.
Buehler eventually became the starter, but he was stronger at kickoffs than he was accurate on field goals. He went to the NFL combine, electing to participate in the speed and strength tests alongside linebackers and linemen, and beating many of them.
His efforts got him drafted by the Cowboys in the fifth round. He showed up to training camp, held that summer at the San Antonio Alamodome, with the rest of the prospective Cowboys… and a rookie cornerback named DeAngelo Smith.
Smith had played his college ball at Cincinnati. He, too, was a fifth-round draft pick, taken 19 spots before Buehler. Smith was hoping to join a secondary in Dallas that already included Terence Newman, Orlando Scandrick, Gerald Sensabaugh, and Ken Hamlin, and he was looking to stand out however he could.
After practice one day, some on-the-field jawing between the locker-room neighbors about who had to work harder in drills and who was really faster finally led to the challenge of a foot race: Smith versus Buehler, the cornerback versus the kicker.
“He was talking a bunch of trash,” Buehler would say later, “so I just shut him up. I knew I had the speed. It made me a little bit of capital, as well. So, there was a little bit on the line.”
By all accounts, Buehler “smoked” Smith in a 50-yard race that wasn’t all that close.
Buehler even slowed up and made a show of stretching out his arms as he crossed the finish line, to the enthusiastic delight of the rest of the Cowboys. Buehler tore off his jersey and chest-bumped every teammate he could find.
“The kicker just got you!” taunted wide receiver Kevin Ogletree. “He got you!”
“He’s on steroids!” yelled wide receiver Roy Williams.
Smith could do nothing but take the L.
“He just beat me fair and square,” the DB conceded.
Head coach Wade Phillips had seen the race, along with offensive coordinator Jason Garrett and several other assistants. Foot-race challenges were summarily banned shortly thereafter, with Phillips telling reporters of his kicker, “He’s not going to do that again. It’s not very smart to do those types of things. He knows it, and he’s not going to do it again.”
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He didn’t, but Buehler boasted that he could have eventually dusted others on the squad, too, including linebackers Keith Brooking and Bradie James, running back Tashard Choice, and even wide receiver Patrick Crayton.
Pitting himself against his teammates was something of a habit for Buehler; he claims he once outlifted defensive end Igor Olshansky in a bench press contest.
As for Smith, he no doubt heard about his second-place finish for the rest of that summer. He never got the opportunity for redemption, though; he was cut at the end of camp. He went on to see action in seven total NFL games, all with the Lions that same autumn.
Buehler did make the 2009 Cowboys team as a kickoff specialist, the first time the team had dedicated a roster spot to that role. Nick Folk handled field goals and extra points. For the 2020 season, Folk was gone. Buehler handled all kicking duties, making 42 of 44 PATs but connecting on just 24 field goals in 32 tries. By 2011, he was back to kickoffs only and missed most of the season with a groin injury. He was waived prior to the 2012 season.
Today, he’s remembered mostly as a big-legged specialist who could also deliver a hit (he logged 14 special-teams tackles in 2010, a single-season record for a Cowboys kicker).
And, of course, as the kicker who, 15 years ago, may have cost a young rookie cornerback a roster spot by toasting him in a foot race.
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