It was Brandon Aubrey’s wife Jenn who first realized her husband might have been playing the wrong sport.
Two years after being selected in the first round of the MLS SuperDraft, and a year after retiring from soccer without appearing in an MLS match, the Aubreys were watching an NFL game on TV when a kicker set up for a field-goal try.
You could do that, Jenn told him.
Unconvinced, Aubrey grabbed a football and headed to the nearest high school field, where he began booming 60-yard kicks.
Maybe he could do this.
Four years later, there’s no longer any doubt. Aubrey set an NFL rookie record this season by making his first 35 field-goal tries for the Dallas Cowboys, becoming the first kicker to make both a 59- and 60-yard kick in the same game. He also led the league in scoring, with 157 points, in field goals made, with 36, and in touchbacks, with a league-record 99, making him the best at his craft in what has been the greatest year for kickers in NFL history.
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There were a record 911 field goals this season, with kickers converting on nearly 86% of their tries, the second-best percentage ever. Of those successful kicks, 158 of them — including 10 by Aubrey — were from at least 50 yards; that, too, is the most ever. And kickers combined to account for nearly a third of all points scored in the regular season.
“Having a great kicker is an absolute weapon,” said Chris Sailer, who runs Burbank-based Chris Sailer Kicking, one of the largest and most successful kicking schools in the country. “The number of points the kicker scores for a team now is huge. Fifty-yard field goals, 60-yard field goals, there’s so many guys that can do that now.
“There’s a sort of proficiency at that position, which makes it absolutely huge for NFL teams to have a top guy.”
Aubrey is certainly that, having earned a Pro Bowl selection while leading the Cowboys to the playoffs, which they’ll open at home Sunday against the Green Bay Packers. All that comes as no surprise to Brian Egan, a former Mississippi State kicker who guided Aubrey’s transition from unemployed soccer player with a big leg into a record-setting kicker.
“I had a lot of confidence in him, that if he did get an opportunity at this level he would go out and have a promising career,” said Egan, 33, a private kicking coach in suburban Dallas. “Just getting there was the hard part. How do we take [someone] who’s never…