Cowboys’ Brandon Aubrey recalls how his All-Pro career began with a missed extra point

Not every great player’s career starts off perfectly.

That’s certainly the case with Dallas Cowboys All-Pro kicker Brandon Aubrey, who not only had an arduous journey just to get to the NFL, but also began his terrific NFL career with a missed extra point.

Aubrey sat down with The Sweet Spot on Sportsradio 96.7 FM/1310 The Ticket (KTCK-AM) at training camp and discussed the relief from getting his contract with the Cowboys done, the unique start to his Cowboys career and how he went from a soccer player to an All-Pro NFL kicker.

Here are some highlights of the conversation, edited lightly for clarity.

How big of a relief was it to get your contract done?

Brandon Aubrey: Yeah, absolutely. Something that big and monumental for your life, you’re going to think about it every day. It’s going to weigh on you, and whether or not it’s going well or going poorly, or just constantly thinking about it. So it’s good to have it done and done well, I think, by both sides. I think both parties can be pretty happy with it. So I’m happy it’s done. I’m happy to stay home and ready to kick for the Cowboys again.

Did it feel like it was dragging along? Was there ever a time where you were thinking you might be elsewhere in 2026?

Aubrey: No, I never let myself think there. Just wanted to get it done and move on. Obviously, had the tender placed on me, so even without it getting done, I’d be here, and then I’d focus on, at some point, shifting away from contract talks and focusing on kicking. That would have been a lot harder to do than previous years, since there’s no real future guaranteed after the tender, and even the tender is not guaranteed. So happy to have it done and be back.

Did you get anything frivolous or big with your new contract?

Aubrey: Yeah, so I did get four Breitling watches, one for me, one for each Brian [Anger] and Trent [Sieg], my long snapper and punter, and then one for my kicking coach.

Is each year different for you at training camp? Are you more comfortable now as you’re a few years into your career?

Aubrey: Yeah, a lot of it is the same, and a lot of it is different. Obviously, we’ve got new players here every year. We’ve got, luckily, the same core special teamers with me, Brian and Trent. So that part is nice and means I don’t have to learn a new operation. Makes that part significantly easier, which is the most important thing I do, is getting the operation down with them. But then the day-to-day changes. We got scheduling quirks that change. We’ve got this year. [Brian Schottenheimer] has had an offseason to think about it, and he’s made a lot of changes to our schedule, and I think for the best, and we’re just excited to have a good team out here. You can see the players are all bought in to the philosophy, the culture, and are working hard and having fun at the same time, which is a recipe for a lot of fun and success.

How much more often do you get recognized now when you’re out in public? Usually kickers aren’t the most recognizable guys, but you’re an All-Pro kicker for the Cowboys.

Aubrey: Yeah, it happens. Try to not stand out in a crowd. Luckily, I look like a generic white guy. If I’m not wearing anything Cowboys related, it takes a particular level of fan to spot me. But it does happen more than you’d like. But usually we go to a lot of the same places, and the staff there knows us, and they take care of us, and do a good job of kind of protecting us from that stuff.

Do you remember the first time you were recognized as a Dallas Cowboy?

Aubrey: Yeah, it was actually at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, and the wait staff had recognized me. It was, I think, like our bye week of year one, and he recognized me. We had a good start, and he just kind of brought me a free Mexican candy shot, which was nice.

Your first game in the NFL, first series, the Cowboys block a field goal and run it back for a touchdown. Cowboys go up 6-0 and you go out there for the extra point and miss your first-ever kick in the NFL. How much did that weigh on you? Did that stick with you?

Aubrey: No, it didn’t. As a kicker, it’s kind of your job to move on from that really quickly. I had a lot of success in soccer and a lot of failure, and you kind of understand quickly how to deal with it. Any mental strength coach worth his weight will tell you that you got to find a way back to neutral thinking, and we’ve had a presentation from our guy all throughout training camp for that, and it was something where I made a decision mentally to unlock or kind of unfocus and just enjoy watching the other kicker, Graham Gano, hit a field goal for my first time on the field, watching an NFL field goal in person, and that was a bad decision. Obviously, got blocked and brought back. So, kind of had to snap out of that being a fan moment and get back into kicking and wasn’t able to do it in time, and just made mistakes. That was also my first sudden change situation in an NFL game, and there’s some details there that I wasn’t aware of, and have since learned. And you know, in the moment, I realized I’d made a mistake, and I talked to my guys, who obviously Brian [Anger] had been in the league for over 10 years at that point, Trent [Sieg] probably like six or seven, and then [former Cowboys special teams coach John Fassel] had been in the league forever, so I had a lot of people with great information to kind of help me correct my mistakes and figure out what I did wrong. Because the form, kicking the ball, a lot of that comes into the details you prepare before you make the the swing. So I listened to them, relied on them, and we actually got another chance in that game, which was kind of funny, with a pick-six.

Do you think we’ll see more star soccer players take the route you took?

Aubrey: Yeah, I think guys will definitely try. I think the thing that’s lost on a lot of people when they hear the story is that it was a a long journey. I retired from soccer in 2018. Pretty much started kicking footballs December of 2018, and didn’t get my first job in the UFL until 2023. So that’s a long journey. It was a difficult one, and one where I felt like I was constantly banging my head in the wall, and it might not ever break for me. And there’s a bunch of guys that that’s the similar story for kicking, whether they went to college for it or not, so I think it might open the eyes for some soccer players that aren’t quite good enough to stick on an MLS roster or overseas, and they want to try something else in the same realm. But at the same time, it’s going to be a long, brutal journey for them, and some guys are built for that.

Tell us about that first year in 2018 when you started kicking.

Aubrey: It was October 2018. We lost in the United Soccer League playoffs. We lost in the playoffs, and my contract was up, and it was time to start looking around. The team I was with folded, Bethlehem Steel FC, and they were going to bring in just a bunch of academy players, and we call it Philadelphia Union Two at the time. So I’m looking around for a contract. It was like 30,000-ish dollars as the going rate, and I’d have to live wherever I signed. I was about to get married, making below the poverty-level wages, and I could turn around and just start being a software engineer. So I started looking for a job as a software engineer. Obviously, I spent two years out of school as a soccer player. Software engineering moves fast. I hadn’t had the skills I needed to, so I started studying. Took me a while to find a job as software engineer, but I did, and that whole time I was kind of dreading it. So I started to try something else like kicking footballs. So went ahead and just picked up a ball and started trying, and didn’t take it too seriously that first day. But it was apparent that I kind of could do this, so if I’m going to go out every day and do this, I need to find somebody who can teach me exactly what it’s supposed to look like and walk me through the process. So I found a kicking coach.