From Notre Dame to MLS to USFL to NFL: How Brandon Aubrey became the Cowboys' kicker

FRISCO, Texas -- When they were strangers brought together by a common friend and the thought that one day they would be Dallas Cowboys teammates was unfathomable, Dak Prescott was doing his best to distract Brandon Aubrey. This was about a year into Aubrey's journey to the NFL -- when dreaming of playing for his hometown team, making the first 31 field goal attempts of his career and becoming the league's scoring leader as a rookie seemed outlandish. Heck, just months earlier in 2019, Aubrey was kicking side by side with middle and high schoolers. Prescott shot a text to Aubrey's kicking coach, Brian Egan, a friend and teammate at Mississippi State, asking what Egan was doing. Egan was at the Warren Sports Complex in Frisco, Texas, working out a couple of his kickers, including Aubrey. It's 7 miles away from The Star, but galaxies away from the NFL. The Cowboys quarterback told Egan he was coming over. "At the time, neither of them knew [Prescott was coming]," Egan said. "They knew me and him had a relationship from being good friends in college, but this was a surprise treat for the boys. It did put a little extra pressure on them, like, 'Let's see what they can do.'" Soon, Prescott set up a kicking competition and was barking instructions. The winner would get $200. "Forty-eight yard line, left hash," he said. "Thirty-three yards, middle," he said. The other kicker said he could make all 10 kicks. He made eight. Prescott had a couple of friends with him. "They were pretending to be fans of the opposition's team," Aubrey said. "Just kind of booing you and whatnot, making it as realistic as possible." Aubrey made nine. "Butter" -- Prescott's nickname for Aubrey -- may not have been born that day, but when the Cowboys signed Aubrey before training camp, the quarterback had a feeling about him. "I was just like, 'Hey, my buddy's an athlete,'" Prescott said. "I was cheering for him in that whole competition, but I wasn't sure. I kept saying, 'He's a pro. He's a grown man. He's going to kick it. He'll be fine.'" AUBREY'S ASCENSION FROM national champion soccer player at Notre Dame to MLS first-round pick with Toronto FC to software engineer at GM Financial to a player for the Birmingham Stallions of the USFL and now NFL-record holder with the Cowboys has a connective tissue that started while watching football one Sunday with his wife, Jenn. But she wanted to clarify one point. "It actually wasn't after seeing [an NFL player's] missed kick, because I think anytime a player misses an opportunity, the reaction is, 'Oh, I could've done that,'" Jenn said. "We were just watching a game and I was thinking, 'Honestly, Brandon can do that.' "I know he thought it was a little far-fetched. But what made me think it was watching him [play soccer] at Notre Dame ... he had an incredible shot. ... I knew he had a good leg, but I don't know I could imagine this." Then came the Google search. The first result that appeared was "One on One Kicking" with Egan. At Aubrey's first workout with Egan, he was with four middle and high school kickers. One of them was Josh Plaster, who is now a punter at the University of Oklahoma. At the time, Plaster was a 17-year-old junior from Flower Mound (Texas) High School. "I thought maybe [Aubrey] was someone that went to college and was coming back to try to kick again in college, like some of the Australians," Plaster said. "I don't know, but we were pretty shocked when he showed up." At first, Aubrey was asking the kids questions, but then the tables turned. "I could tell off the bat that his ball contact was something that's out of a comic book," Plaster said. "It's unreal. He doesn't swing his leg very hard and it's a missile off his foot. Really high, really far." It didn't take long for Egan to be impressed too. "He had a couple of balls that were just really pure," Egan said. "I looked at the other coaches and said, 'This kid, he's got something special to him.'" Three days a week for the next two years, Aubrey and Egan would train together. When COVID-19 hit, they had to find different places to kick because some of their fields were closed. At one point, Aubrey was aiming at light poles for practice in a community park. "He put the time and effort in to get to the point that he could compete at the highest level," Egan said. "I told him, 'Hey, it's time to venture to these showcase camps.' I'd done what I could for him, teaching him, but now he's got to get your feet wet and see where you stand amongst your peers." AS HE TOOK aim at a football kicking career, connections between Aubrey, Notre Dame and the Cowboys began to appear. At one of the showcases, he met former kicker John Carney, who starred at Notre Dame before having a long NFL career. Aubrey impressed enough that he was picked in the 32nd round (No. 260 overall) in the 2022 USFL draft by the Birmingham Stallions coached by Skip Holtz. Skip's father, Lou, was the Irish's head coach and Skip served as an assistant. Stallions special teams coach Chris Boniol had a tie to the Cowboys -- he was their kicker from 1994 to 1996. He won a Super Bowl with them in 1995 and held the team mark for consecutive kicks made at 27. From 2011 to 2013, he was an assistant special teams coach on Jason Garrett's staff. Boniol coached Dan Bailey, who was an undrafted free agent in 2011 and became the most accurate kicker in team history (88.2%). He immediately saw a similarity between Bailey and Aubrey. "He's got the physical talent, but I thought the makeup was one of the biggest things people overlooked," Boniol said of Aubrey. "He's very even, constant, flatline personality. He's never too excited. Never too frustrated. Just tremendous poise." With the Stallions, Boniol put Aubrey through different situations in practice to get him ready for game action: delays for an instant replay review, a last-second timeout, a mayday moment at the end of a half or game. In 2022, Aubrey made 18 of 22 field goal tries and 22 of 24 extra points for the Stallions. This past season, he made 14 of 15 field goal attempts and all 35 extra points. Kicker appreciation post ??@Brandon_Aubrey is special ? pic.twitter.com/EOv5JJjk4z— B2B CHAMPIONSTALLIONS ?? (@USFLStallions) May 9, 2022 Cowboys special teams coach John Fassel watched Aubrey in person at a game this past spring. "He did his homework," Boniol said of Fassel. "The scouting department did their homework. No other NFL team called me on him. None. Whereas the Cowboys turned over every stone." Aubrey signed with the Cowboys on July 6. The day before it became official, he called Egan to let him know. By the end of the month, he was in Oxnard, California, for training camp, competing for the kicker job with Tristan Vizcaino. By Aug. 7, Aubrey won the job. "The best thing we did, clearly, was making a quick decision in training camp," Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said. "That's where sometimes if you operate too quickly, it could bite you. But I think it was the best thing we did, and it's a real credit to Brandon. Just watching him kick early in training camp, his talent level is something that we all wanted to unleash and make sure he got all the reps." GROWING UP IN Plano, Texas, Aubrey was a soccer player first, but he was also a Cowboys fan. "When we first started dating, he bought me a Cowboys jersey. He said, 'All right, we wear this on Sundays,'" said Jenn, who played lacrosse at Notre Dame for two years. "My family had allegiances to another team, but not anymore." It was a No. 88 Dez Bryant jersey. Now, she wears her husband's No. 17 to games. That he became his hometown team's kicker is surreal to them. His job at GM Financial was in Arlington, Texas, not far from AT&T Stadium. When he drives home from games, he is on the same road he took to work back then. Aubrey never could have imagined setting an NFL record by becoming the first kicker with multiple field goals of at least 59 yards in one game. He broke Bailey's team record for most consecutive kicks made at 31 Sunday against the Bills. He is on pace to set an NFL record for most touchbacks in a season. He now has media at his locker each week asking questions. He appeared on "The Dan Patrick Show" last week. But he does his best to avoid what is being said and written about him. "It's been a little bit of a circus, I would say," Aubrey said. "But looking forward to getting past it and moving on to the next game and just making the next kick." There is a family message group without him called "The family sans BA." "At the very beginning, he sat us all down and said, 'Hey, I want to let y'all know I don't want to be distracted by anything out there, what they're saying about me, good or bad. I don't want the bad stuff to be in my mind. And if everything is really good and I hear that, then as soon as we're not sharing, that implies something bad,'" Jenn said. "He just wanted to keep his mind clear." Going around town has become harder as the season has progressed, not that he has noticed. "I try to keep the hat low," Aubrey said. "He's such a humble guy that I don't think he wants to admit people do recognize him" said Jenn. One night, the Aubreys were out with some of Jenn's co-workers from American Airlines, where she is a pilot instructor, when two girls who weren't part of their group asked for a selfie. Another night, they were walking into their favorite restaurant. Jenn remembers her husband was wearing black pants and a gray shirt without any Cowboys markings. But he was wearing a True Brvnd hat with the familiar upside down and backward Dallas logo. "Somebody walking out was holding the door, looked up and down and his eyes were huge," Jenn said, "and then he goes, 'Go Cowboys.'" That didn't happen when he played in Toronto or even Birmingham. It certainly did not happen when he was kicking at Warren Sports Complex. "All greats have a story," Egan said. And then there is this story: Brandon and Jenn met as high school seniors at a function in North Texas for incoming students to Notre Dame. They have been together ever since, and later this month, they will celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. While they are far from the time when Brandon won $200 off Prescott, they see a tangible reminder of that day on his left ring finger. "His ring finger was broken from soccer," Jenn said, "and so he had a really big knuckle and a wedding ring wouldn't fit. So we had one of those silicone athletic wedding rings. And as we're on the altar I'm trying to put on that silicone ring, and that was fun. So we never bought a ring. Then a little later, [the swelling] in is finger had gone down a little bit, enough to have a real ring. And we bought that ring with help from the money Dak paid him. "So indirectly, Dak bought his wedding ring."