After making a 64-yard field goal on Sunday, Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey told PFT he thought he could have made it from 70 or 71 yards. His coach would have been confident letting him try it.
Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said he and quarterback Dak Prescott figure as long as the offense gets the ball close to the 50-yard line, Aubrey can make the field goal. If the ball is snapped from the 50, that would be a 68-yard field goal, and Schottenheimer says Aubrey can do it a little farther than that.
“We would try it from 70-ish,” Schottenheimer said, via the Star-Telegram. “We’ve seen him make those before. We always want to try to get as close as we can. But he’s always like, yeah, I’m good. And, yeah, that’s pretty cool. Dak’s always like, what’s the line to make, and I’m like, yeah, 50-ish. You know, 50-ish. He’s like, OK, that’s like, a 67-70 yard field goal. So there’s really not one, but the confidence that you see the guy kick with is just incredible.”
Schottenheimer said he feels lucky to have a player like Aubrey on his team.
“He’s incredible, man,” Schottenheimer said of Aubrey. “I mean, he really is. He’s incredible and just unshakable. We see it every day from him. But I mean, those big kicks, man, and you guys have a better vantage point than I do. I kind of can tell whether they’re going in or not, but I think most of them are right dead down the center. The operation was great too. I mean, just the protection part was great. The snap, the hold. But yes, what a weapon.”
The NFL record for the longest field goal is 66 yards. Aubrey may break it just as soon as a Cowboys drive stalls at the 50-yard line.
The Cowboys will be without their center for a significant chunk of the season.
According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, Dallas’ Cooper Beebe is expected to miss 6-8 weeks with a high-ankle sprain.
He is likely to be placed on injured reserve, but should be able to return later in the 2025 season.
Beebe was on the field for 73 of Dallas’ 89 offensive snaps in Sunday’s victory over the Giants. He was replaced by Brock Hoffman, who is likely to retain the center job in Beebe’s absence.
The Cowboys will be on the road to face the Bears in Week 3.
A report before Sunday’s game indicated that the Giants felt no urgency to replace quarterback Russell Wilson with first-round pick Jaxson Dart after a dismal performance in Week 1 and Wilson spent Week 2’s visit to Dallas doing his best to make sure that remains the case.
Wilson threw for 450 yards and three touchdowns, including a 48-yarder to Malik Nabers with 25 seconds left that looked like it might give the Giants the victory. Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey’s 64-yard field goal at the buzzer put an end to those thoughts and Wilson’s biggest mistake of the day in overtime helped set up Aubrey’s game-winning field goal. Wilson tried another deep ball and got intercepted by Donovan Wilson, but the unhappy ending wasn’t the main focus of his postgame comments.
Wilson said the game was meaningful to him because it was “time to answer the call” after a week of chatter about when the Giants were going to send him to the bench.
“I embraced the noise,” Wilson said, via a transcript from the team. “I don’t run from it. And we have to keep answering the call. Today, we didn’t do enough to win. That’s all that matters, is us as a team, us finding a way to win that game. We believe in the guys in this room. Defense battling. Offense battling, special teams. They laid it all on the line. You can’t ask for any more effort and love, passion and energy, and work than we just gave.”
As well as Wilson played, the Giants still lost and that leaves them at 0-2 with the Chiefs coming to town next Sunday night. The more the losses pile up, the more the desire some will have to see Dart take the reigns will grow as well but Wilson’s reminder that he’s still capable of playing at a high level is a welcome development in the short term.
After directing the Packers to observe a moment of silence one day after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the NFL allowed the various teams that hosted games to decide how to handle the situation over the balance of the weekend.
During the 13 games played on Sunday, six did and seven did not.
The Dallas Cowboys did. After the overtime win against the Giants, owner Jerry Jones explained his decision.
“We just all abhor violence,” Jones said, via Jon Machota of TheAthletic.com. “And it’s impacting us all. And, certainly, we all stand together on any front, relative to the threat of violence. . . . I was a young guy, but aware, in the ‘60s when we had huge violence, lost President Kennedy and his brother and many, many others, Martin Luther King. It’s something that we all really need to just be aware of, support our law enforcement, and do everything we can to keep the violence in check.”
There is no place for political violence in a civilized society. Unfortunately, it’s starting to feel like the ‘60s all over again, with assassinations and attempted assassinations happening far too often.
There’s also no simple answer. It’s easy to say we need to unite as a nation. It’s proving to be difficult to accomplish that.
Hopefully, our leaders on both sides of the aisle will set aside politics and commit to the greater good that we all should strive to achieve.
“One nation. Under God. Indivisible. With liberty and justice for all.”
We say those words every time we recite the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s time for all of us to start living them.
When the Cowboys were getting themselves in position for an overtime-forcing 64-yard field goal try, what was kicker Brandon Aubrey doing?
He was taking a page from the book of Stuart Smalley. And it worked.
“Just reminding myself that I’m built for this moment,” Aubrey told PFT by phone after the 40-37 overtime win. “‘You’re the best person on the planet to do this job, so go out there and make the kick.’”
Aubrey said that he tries to be “overconfident” in those moments. Given his performance, Aubrey seems to be properly confident. Because he’s an incredibly accurate kicker. With impressive range.
He’s not sure what that range is, but he said he hit today’s 64-yarder as well as he could. So he estimates he could make it from 70 or 71.
Someone is going to do it. It’s just a matter of time. And when the time comes, Aubrey could be the one to do it.
