Brandon Aubrey is just the latest Dallas Cowboys kicker to have success during his early days with the team.
Brandon Aubrey has been the talk of the town this week after booting a 66-yard field goal last Saturday night against the Las Vegas Raiders. As we noted the day after, it would have reportedly been good from 72 yards out. Insane.
The 66-yarder is just the latest phenomenon that Aubrey has been a part of as he smashed the NFL record for most consecutive field goals made to begin a career throughout the 2023 season. In fact, across his 38 attempts last year he missed only twice.
It should come as no surprise that Aubrey has the highest career field goal percentage through a player’s first 17 games in the NFL with a minimum of 38 attempts taken.
This is an admittedly specific set of data to look for, but it came to mind because of Dan Bailey. It has been six years since we were all caught completely off guard at roster cutdowns when Dallas released him and Aubrey is a big reason why we have been able to finally and firmly move on.
Obviously Bailey had a remarkable career for the team that began when he was an undrafted free agent for the club all the way back in 2011. It should come as no surprise that through his first 17 games (he qualifies for the minimum attempts) that he is among the most accurate kickers in field goal history as well. He is tied for fifth at 86.8%.
But in searching for this Richie Cunningham’s name also popped up as he had a 92.1% level of accuracy in the same stretch. The Cowboys are well represented here.
To be clear, this is a very specific measurement that will immediately change the moment that Aubrey lines up for the season opener when Dallas visits the Cleveland Browns, but it is still pretty cool nonetheless.
Amazingly over the course of the last 27 years the Cowboys have managed to find three of the seven most accurate field goal kickers at the beginnings of their career. Even more amazingly is that none of the three were drafted by the Cowboys.
Time will tell what Brandon Aubrey’s career ultimately looks like for the Cowboys, but there is no question that the team deserves an enormous amount of praise for identifying him, and both Bailey and Cunningham before him, even if those were different staffs and regimes.
Nobody finds kickers who start off hot like the Dallas Cowboys.