The Cowboys have decided they’ve seen enough from Tristan Vizcaino.
The 27-year-old kicker is being released by the team following a lackluster showing at the team’s training camp. Vizcaino connected on just 22 of his 35 attempts during the Cowboys’ padded practices in Oxnard.
He had a particularly rough day on Saturday, hitting just four of eight kicks, but Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy says Vizcaino’s release was not a knee-jerk reaction to one poor outing.
“It’s never just a one-day deal,” he told reporters prior to practice Monday.
The roster move leaves Brandon Aubrey as the only kicker on the roster, though the former USFL star still has plenty of room for improvement. He’s fared only slightly better thus far in camp, going 26-of-35 on his field goal tries, a make percentage that would have ranked him 32nd in the league last year.
McCarthy says he’s looking forward to seeing Aubrey take a bigger step toward possibly winning the starting job, but he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of bringing in another kicker before Week 1.
Seemed weird to me at first that the Cowboys don’t want to bring in any competition for Brandon Aubrey, but then I remembered that kicker is a position where your competition doesn’t need to be in camp.
Makes sense to use this week + Jax as an audition of sorts.
— David Helman (@davidhelman_) August 7, 2023
“We felt that it was an opportunity to give Brandon a majority of the reps,” McCarthy said. “But as far as another kicker competition, we’re always open to that.”
The coach did add, though, “I’m excited about our young guy.”
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Aubrey, who played collegiate soccer at Notre Dame and spent the past two championship seasons with the Birmingham Stallions, is expected to get his first NFL experience when the Cowboys host Jacksonville for a preseason game on Saturday.
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