Tag: brandon aubrey

Watch Brandon Aubrey explaining his path from Notre Dame soccer to the NFL

What an amazing journey for Aubrey

In what has become like script from a movie, former Notre Dame soccer star [autotag]Brandon Aubrey[/autotag] went from believing his career was over as a professional athlete, only to pick up kicking and finding his way to the NFL.

The Dallas Cowboys All-Pro place kicker took the league by storm last year, as the rookie made 44-of-46 attempts, setting multiple records along the way. Aubrey made his first 19 field goals, an NFL record, while his two field goals of 59-plus yards in one game was also put him into the books.

It’s hard to imagine this kind of success from someone who at one point was a software engineer. As part of Amazon’s broadcast, Taylor Rooks moderated Aubrey through his journey from a first round pick to using his degree, being pushed by his wife Jenn to try out kicking.

The story is one of belief from a loved one, pushing each other to be their best.

https://twitter.com/TaylorRooks/status/1839472100605612158

Aubrey’s story will surely be remembered for a long time, considering he’s just starting his career with a bang.

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The Forgotten Play: This unremarkable Mike McCarthy decision cost Cowboys vs Ravens

The comeback was furious but all for naught. If Dallas made a different decision in the third quarter, it might not have been. | From @KDDrummondNFL

The Dallas Cowboys were terrible for about 50 minutes on Sunday afternoon. The final score reads 28-25, but about one-third through the fourth quarter, Dallas regained possession of the ball trailing by 22 points. They went on a furious rally, outscoring the Baltimore Ravens 19-0 in the period, but it was too little, too late.

The Ravens were able to convert two new sets of downs on the final drive after the Cowboys had cut it to three and from there Baltimore bled out the clock to secure the victory. Three touchdown drives and a converted onside kick made things close, but could things have been even more contested?

The Cowboys bypassed an opportunity to put three points on the board when they were being blown out, and they ended up losing by three points.

During the third quarter, Dallas head coach Mike McCarthy made a safe decision when momentum wasn’t on his team’s side. In retrospect, a different decision may have put the Cowboys in a much better position late in the game.

Trailing 21-6 at the half, the Cowboys defense took the field after the break but still wasn’t able to corral the Ravens’ rushing attack. Derrick Henry raced for 26 of his 151 ground yards and getting into the end zone for a 28-6 lead.

Dallas took the ball back at their 29 with 11:58 remaining in the third quarter and marched into Baltimore territory before the drive bogged down. A Tyler Guyton hold on 1st-and-10 from the Ravens’ 29 effectively killed the drive. On 3rd-and-18, Prescott took a sack for a loss of 11 yards, pushing them back to the Baltimore 48.

Dallas decided to punt and the Ravens started a new drive at their own 11.

Why didn’t Dallas try for a field goal there? Earlier in the game, superstar kicker Brandon Aubrey nailed a 65-yarder with room to spare, kicking from just one-yard shy of the NFL record. Why wouldn’t McCarthy give Aubrey a chance to set the all-time record and inch a little closer?

Sure, at the time the game felt out of reach and the decision was almost assuredly from the perspective of Dallas needing a big play to get back in the game. Kicking the ball deep to pin the Ravens means a turnover gets possession deeper in enemy territory.

But if Dallas had kicked and made the field goal, everything about their fourth-quarter comeback changes. When Dallas scored their first fourth-quarter TD, the game is 28-15 with the extra point try coming.

ESPN’s fourth-down bot says that in as close a call as can be, punting the right choice; but it was an insignificant difference and one that doesn’t take Aubrey into account.

Aubrey definitely has a better than 25% chance of nailing the 67-yard field goal that is listed above, so with consideration for the Dallas talent, that would certainly have a bigger impact on Win Probability than the cookie-cutter wash shown above.

Dallas should’ve sent Aubrey onto the field, and the end of the game may have turned out differently.

Tom Brady calls Dallas’ Brandon Aubrey ‘the Steph Curry of kickers’

Brandon Aubrey of the Cowboys wowed Tom Brady

There isn’t a shot from long range Steph Curry can’t hit. Tom Brady was on the call at the Baltimore Ravens-Dallas Cowboys game and he thinks he saw the NFL equivalent of the Golden State Warrior guard.

That’s because Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey nailed a 65-yard field goal in the first quarter.

Aubrey’s kick was the only points Dallas had to this writing as they fell behind 14-3.

Curry was at a different game, watching the Raiders play host to his hometown Carolina Panthers at Allegiant Stadium.

Here’s how Cowboys K Brandon Aubrey is taking advantage of new rules to dominate

Brandon Aubrey and John Fassel are cooking up new ways to gain an edge on Cowboys kickoffs. | From @ReidDHanson

The NFL is a cyclical league, loaded with adaptation and revisitation moreso than actual innovation. Teams imitate, copy and steal from each other, year after year, and when they’re not doing that, they’re catching opponents off guard by stealing tricks from the past.

Yet, opportunities for innovation still bubble up when rule and/or procedure changes are made to the game. The NFL’s kickoff process is a prime example of this change, with the NFL’s efforts focused on reducing injuries and simultaneously increasing the number of kick returns. For Brandon Aubrey and the Cowboys, this is a prime opportunity to get ahead of the pack.

A topic of conversation throughout the offseason, the NFL’s new kickoff process involves the kick coverage team and the kick return team lining up 10 yards apart. Frozen until the ball is fielded, collision speed between the two units is minimized while space to return the kick is maximized. As an extra incentive to make them returnable, balls that first land all the way in the endzone are eligible for a 30-yard-line touchback.

As extra incentive for the returner to return kicks, balls that land short of the endzone, in the landing zone, and bounce through the endzone for a touchback are placed at the 20-yard-line. If that all wasn’t enough, balls that go out of bounds and balls that land short of the landing zone are touchbacks to the 40-yard-line.

The three different touchback points serve as clear incentives for the kicking team to provide returnable kicks and the receiving team to return all returnable kicks. It also gives Cowboys special teams coach John Fassel a chance to strategize behind the leg of his wildly talented All-Pro kicker.

Aubrey, Dallas’ second-year kicker, is the complete package. Accurate from anywhere on the field and powerful enough to boom any kick he wants through the back of the end zone, Aubrey has a set of skills very few kickers have.

https://twitter.com/austingayle_/status/1834045878270906783

Aubrey’s leg power allows him to send oddly-struck knuckleballs to returners. The ball fulfills its obligation to fall within the landing zone but the uncentered strike point causes it to follow an unpredictable path to the return man.

Cleveland struggled to field these cleanly, losing precious time to advance the kick in the process. On one occasion the ball even snuck through the landing zone completely, earning a 20-yard-line touchback “penalty” as a result. It stands to reason these difficult to catch kicks bring with them an added element of fumble-bility, potentially resulting in a turnover.

Since the coverage and blocking units can’t move until the ball is caught, there’s no incentive to lob a high fly ball like kickers have done in the past. It opens up a handful of opportunities to send off kicks with varying trajectories and spin.

The new kicking rules bring with them opportunities for innovation. It’s not often the Cowboys are on the side of innovation but that appears to be exactly where we are with Fassel and Aubrey leading the way.

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‘What a kick’: Inside the sequence that scrapped 71-yard FG try by Cowboys’ Brandon Aubrey

From @ToddBrock24f7: Aubrey tied an NFL record and then nearly got the chance to break it. John Fassel explains what happened in Cleveland to wave it off.

Officially speaking, Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey connected on 4-of-4 field goal attempts in Cleveland- every single one from 40 yards or more- during the team’s 33-17 opening-day win over the Browns.

Everyone knows he actually hit an NFL-record-tying fifth, too… except it didn’t count.

But the kick the whole world will be talking about for a while is the one he didn’t get to even try.

Special teams coordinator John Fassel went through all of it with reporters during a Monday press conference, admitting with a laugh that “the blood has boiled down a little bit” after a confusing series of events that saw Aubrey, the second-year phenom and former soccer star, drilling a 66-yard field goal… and then, for a brief but thrilling moment, prepping to try it again from an impossible-sounding 71 yards.

Aubrey had already hit from 57 and 40, but his third attempt of the day came from 66 yards out, which would have tied the current NFL mark and matched a boot Aubrey made just last month during the Cowboys’ preseason game in Las Vegas. Dallas was already up 20-3 in the waning seconds of Sunday’s first half, but it took just the right sequence of events to put the offense in position for the attempt.

“Coach asked me where we’ve got to get to to get in field goal range,” Fassel explained, “and I said, ‘Just across the 50.'”

So when Jalen Tolbert was forced out of bounds at the Cleveland 48 with nine seconds remaining, the field goal unit hustled onto the field.

But that’s when things went wonky.

“What it looked like, to me, was two issues happened,” according to Fassel. “It looked like they got the quarterback ball off the field late, and they got the K-ball in late. Then once they got the K-ball set, one of the officials- when he saw a defensive substitution- stood over Trent [Sieg, Cowboys long snapper] and said, ‘Hold, hold.’ So Trent wasn’t able to address the ball to get ready to snap it. … So by the time we got over the ball and snapped it, we were one second late.”

https://twitter.com/TheAthleticNFL/status/1832904601907114173

Aubrey’s ball sailed through the uprights, but the flag negated the kick. Loud complaints about the clock from Fassel and head coach Mike McCarthy fell on deaf ears (although the Cowboys could also have used one of their two remaining timeouts, even if they shouldn’t have needed to), and the line of scrimmage was moved back five yards.

That first kick looked like it would have been good from 71. And for a tantalizing moment, it appeared as though the Cowboys were going to try it. McCarthy had already taken off his headset, he said, apparently content to turn Aubrey loose.

“We actually considered it,” Fassel confessed. “If it was going the other way, we might have kicked it because there’s a little bit of wind at our back going the other way.”

A quick check-in with Cowboys punter and holder Bryan Anger told Fassel it was going to be very close. Anger confirmed the 66-yarder was hit “about as clean as [Aubrey] can hit it” but then added, “I’m not sure it made it by more than five [yards].”

The Browns already had a return man waiting under the goalpost in case the try came up short. And that got Fassel flashing back to a late September afternoon in 2008.

Fassel was a first-year assistant special teams coach for the Raiders that season and saw head coach Lane Kiffin send out noted long-range specialist Sebastian Janikowski for an absurd 76-yard attempt at the end of the second quarter of a game against the Chargers.

“I’ll never forget. Antonio Cromartie’s back there, and I’m like, ‘Oh, damn,'” Fassel remembered. “He catches the ball on the goal line, and we’re covering a kickoff with 10 offensive linemen against Antonio Cromartie.”

https://twitter.com/BackAftaThis/status/1310646638445199362

Luckily, the return didn’t even reach the 30, but the Chargers were closer to a big return than Janikowski’s cannon shot had been to being successful.

“That was, I think, the day before Lane Kiffin got fired,” Fassel noted.

A similar play had once burned McCarthy even worse. As the 49ers’ offensive coordinator in 2005, McCarthy watched Bears return ace Nathan Vasher return a field goal attempt 108 yards for an end-of-half score.

Fassel told reporters the risk of letting Cleveland back into the game with a dramatic touchdown going into intermission- and with the Browns set to receive the second-half kick- was simply too great.

“Immediately, both of our memory banks went, ‘Ah, let’s go ahead and take the kicker off the field and put the ball back in the quarterback’s hands.”

Aubrey was pulled, not even aware that he had been thisclose to being given a shot at the NFL record.

“In the moment, I didn’t know it was from 71,” Aubrey said from his locker after the game. “I thought it was still 66, because I thought they called a timeout, not delay of game. So it’s hard to say how I would have reacted out there, but it’s probably the right call on the day in the conditions.”

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Winds in Cleveland on Sunday were near 15 miles per hour, with the stiffest breezes blowing into the northeast end of Huntington Bank Field, the side open to Lake Erie. That had definitely factored into Aubrey’s approaches on the day.

“On the one end zone, the end zone where I got the 57 and the 66, there was kind of a big wind that picked up around the 20-yard-line going right to left and a little bit into the field. So it was tough,” he said. “In the warmup, the ball was moving a lot more than it normally does.”

While the 29-year-old said he would “absolutely” like to try from 70 or beyond in a game someday, he conceded that Sunday was neither the time nor the place.

Not that anyone was going to consult with him anyway.

“To be frank, I don’t have any input into the decision,” Aubrey explained. “Bones and Anger are probably talking about it, and McCarthy’s involved. I’m sitting over by the net, just waiting for the call. I go out there and kick what they tell me to kick.”

Kind of like the 66-yard bomb he made less than a month ago in the enclosed Allegiant Stadium.

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1825014827322130491

Fassel said taking the go/no-go call out of the kicker’s hands is the way it should be, ostensibly since a professional kicker will likely always say he can sink any kick asked of him. Not trying the 71-yarder on Sunday was, both coaches believe, the right call.

“We did the wise thing,” per Fassel.

But a full 24 hours after the fact, the coordinator was definitely still thinking about what might have been… and almost was.

“Gosh, that would have been fantastic. I mean, that would have been an all-timer,” Fassel mused. “Especially in Cleveland, because grass, and the conditions. I mean, what a kick. Geez.”

And it begs a very obvious question: how far would he let Aubrey try from in an enclosed stadium, on turf and with no wind? At a place like, say, the Cowboys’ home venue?

“In AT&T Stadium?” he asked.

Fassel says he already has a max distance in mind.

“I don’t know that I want to give you the number, so other teams don’t use it against us,” he revealed. “But it would be a pretty significant distance that I’m not used to. It’s like, ‘Gosh, I don’t know what the ultimate range is.'”

It feels almost inevitable to think that Cowboys Nation is going to find out at some point this season.

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Mike McCarthy ruined Brandon Aubrey’s 66-yard FG attempt by inexplicably not taking a timeout

Mike McCarthy will never get out of his own way.

Mike McCarthy has been an NFL head coach for almost 20 years with two separate teams now. Somehow, the Dallas Cowboys leader still doesn’t have a hang of how to properly use timeouts in the middle of a game.

On Sunday against the Cleveland Browns, that cost his kicker Brandon Aubrey dearly.

As Tom Brady worked through apparent anxiousness, the Cowboys tried to close out the first half with points by attempting a 66-yard field goal attempt. Aubrey showed he more than had the leg, squeezing the monster kick through the uprights, seemingly tying the NFL record for the longest field goal ever. For a moment.

The issue is that Dallas was called for an avoidable delay of game penalty because McCarthy weirdly didn’t call a timeout. (Note: He had TWO of them.) When this kick attempt became 71 yards, the Cowboys elected to just go into the halftime locker room.

C’mon man:

Look, the Cowboys were kicking the Browns’ butts. In the grand scheme of things, making an extremely long field goal attempt while already up three scores shouldn’t mean much for Dallas.

Even still, not calling a timeout before aiming to take the super-long field goal is so classic McCarthy it’s not even funny. It’s a basic game management mistake that shouldn’t happen for someone as experienced as he is. Seriously, there was no benefit to keeping that timeout — it’s the last play of the half, and that’s what you lined up! Just give your kicker the chance you promised!

Against the Browns, this mistake cost the Cowboys nothing. Against better teams down the line, it’s worth wondering whether McCarthy will unwittingly step on a rake again.

Cowboys kicker was going to obliterate NFL record until this happened

The Cowboys came oh so close to shattering an unthinkable NFL record, but chickened out. | From @KDDrummondNFL

The Dallas Cowboys entered their 2023 training camp without much confidence in their kicking game. After a few years of juggling placekickers, it felt like they had found something the year prior. Brett Maher had been tremendous right up until the final games of the season when he caught the yips and couldn’t find anything.

The club took a flyer on a young AFL kicker named Brandon Aubrey, and all he did was make the Pro Bowl and earn All-Pro honoes. It was an amazing rookie season that would’ve resulted in Rookie of the Year if kickers counted on offense or defense. He’s clearly looking to establish himself as the best kicker in the game in 2024.

After nailing a 66-yarder in the preseason, a distance that’s the NFL record in games that count, Aubrey was ready for the opportunity at the end of the first half. With Dallas dominating Cleveland, 20-3, Aubrey was sent out with four seconds remaining to try a 66-yard attempt.

He nailed it, with plenty to spare but a delay of game penalty nullified it.

https://twitter.com/ohnohedidnt24/status/1832901498768171515

Head coach Mike McCarthy was irate, complaining that the play clock hadn’t properly been reset.

And then McCarthy sent the field goal unit back onto the field for a record-setting 71-yard attempt. Dallas lined up but at the last second the Browns called a timeout and the head coach changed his mind during the break.

Penalty nullifies 66-yard field goal by Dallas’ Brandon Aubrey

Brandon Aubrey nearly tied Justin Tucker’s NFL record for longest field goal

Brandon Aubrey had a chance to equal Justin Tucker’s NFL record 66-yard field goal on Sunday when the Dallas Cowboys visited the Cleveland Browns.

Mike McCarthy sent out his kicker, who drilled the football through the uprighs.

Only problem was the snap was a second late and Dallas was called for delay of game, nullifying the kick.

Former Notre Dame soccer star blast huge field goal in NFL preseason game

What a kick!

It’s not just former Notre Dame football stars battling it out to make an NFL roster, an Irish soccer star is doing the same.

[autotag]Brandon Aubrey[/autotag], who played soccer in South Bend from 2013-2016, tried his hand first at professional soccer, playing from 2017-2018 in Canada. It didn’t work out there, so he changed sports following a returning to Notre Dame to complete his software engineering degree.

During the 2022-23 football season, Aubrey kicked for the Birmingham Stallions, helping the team win back-to-back championships. That performance got him get an opportunity with the Dallas Cowboys and on Saturday, he showed off his massive leg-power, blasting a 66-yard field goal.

Although it was just the preseason, it was a very impressive feat. The kick by Aubrey would have tied the NFL record for longest field goal ever. Hopefully this showing gives the Cowboys a reason for him to stick around this season.

Contact/Follow us @IrishWireND on X (Formerly Twitter), and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Notre Dame news, notes, and opinions.

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Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey nails 66-yard field goal

Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey hit a 66-yard field goal

Now that the Pac-12 is down to two, a little NFL after dark on a Saturday night in the preseason.

Dallas Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey made coach Mike McCarthy look brilliant at the end of the second quarter of the game with the Las Vegas Raiders on Saturday.

Watch as Aubrey drills a 66-yard field goal to give Dallas a 13-6 lead.

“Just kind of feels like nothing’s quite there,” Aubrey said after the 27-12 win. “Got a little bounce off of your foot, that it sticks onto your foot for like a fraction of a second and then it goes. It kind of shoots off, jumps off your foot. And you know right off the bat it was a good, clean hit.”

The former MLS first-round pick was 36-of-38 on field goal tries last season. The 66-yard would have equaled the NFL record set by Justin Tucker in 2021.

Would say Cowboys fans could have a drink to celebrate but they might want to avoid the Wynn  Field Club in the end zone in Vegas.