Aubrey Takes a Familiar Kicking Routine Into Unfamiliar Territory

A football is an awkward little problem to solve. It can be struck cleanly, mis-hit slightly or sent on a flight that lands somewhere between the kicker’s intention and the ball’s own eccentric agenda.

Brandon Aubrey has spent considerable time learning those distinctions. During Thursday’s predeparture media availability in Frisco, the Dallas Cowboys kicker described a process built on experimentation: striking the ball in different ways, recognizing several likely outcomes and trying to make the useful one repeatable. That explanation matters more than the novelty surrounding Sunday’s game in Brazil.

Aubrey is preparing to face Baltimore at Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã Stadium, but his approach is familiar. The Dallas kicker is not treating an overseas setting as an invitation to redesign his technique. He is treating it as another place where an established method will have to meet a few unfamiliar details.

That balance—adjust when the information demands it, preserve the routine everywhere else—is the intelligent part of his plan.

The experiment behind the calm

Aubrey’s description was revealing because it made professional kicking sound less like one perfectly repeated motion and more like an ongoing laboratory exercise. He described experimenting with contact on the ball while distinguishing between kicks that travel too far, reach the intended area or fall short.

The point is not that every attempt can be placed perfectly. The point is that Aubrey has developed a framework for recognizing what his strike produced and adjusting his expectations accordingly. That is more useful than pretending the football behaves identically every time.

His results provide context for the confidence. During Dallas’ 37-20 victory over Washington on Sept. 20, Aubrey made a 44-yard field goal and then converted from 60 yards. The latter was his seventh successful field goal of at least 60 yards, an NFL record.

Those kicks explain why Dallas would value continuity in his preparation. He had already converted a stalled possession into points from a substantial distance.

The Washington result also demonstrated how a kicker can quietly alter the shape of a contest. Dallas’ offense moved the ball well through the air but rushed for only 66 yards, while Washington finished with 182 rushing yards. Aubrey’s 60-yarder came after the Cowboys stalled at the Commanders’ 42-yard line, turning a possession that had lost momentum into three points and a 30-13 lead.

A field goal can be a small event in a 37-point performance, but it can also keep a stalled drive from becoming an empty one.

The cleats are part of the answer

Aubrey was reluctant to change his familiar cleats, though he had alternatives available. I read that as a sensible preference for keeping a known element of his routine, while preserving the option to respond if the surface demands it.

That is not stubbornness for its own sake. It is an attempt to limit the number of moving parts. If the kick, the approach and the footing all feel different at once, there is less certainty about which adjustment helped or hurt. Keeping the footwear familiar preserves one known element while allowing Aubrey to respond to whatever he finds underfoot.

His plan to inspect the kicking area still leaves room for adjustment. That matters because consistency can become a liability if a player treats familiarity as a reason to ignore new information. Aubrey’s preference for his usual footwear makes sense only alongside that willingness to assess what he finds.

That detail also shows the limits of preparation. Aubrey cannot control every part of the field or decide in advance exactly how conditions will feel. He can control whether he looks carefully, identifies a concern and communicates before an important kick. The rest has to remain within the boundaries of his established approach.

The international setting gives this discussion extra attention, but Dallas’s need from its kicker is recognizable. A possession ending near the edge of field-goal range still calls for a decision, and a touchdown still leaves an extra point to complete. The travel itinerary adds preparation; it does not replace those football jobs.

For Dallas, that is the reassuring order of operations. Aubrey will inspect what needs inspecting, keep his cleats unless circumstances force a change and rely on a technique refined through repeated experimentation. In a sport full of elaborate travel plans and anxious talk about firsts, the kicker’s advantage may be his refusal to make the strange setting stranger than it needs to be.

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