Who said historic kicks are reserved for regular-season and playoff games? Not Brandon Aubrey. Already a surging face of NFL special teams thanks to his unprecedented transition to football, the Pro Bowl kicker furthered his emerging legacy Saturday night, drilling a 66-yard field goal as time expired in the first half of a preseason matchup with the Las Vegas Raiders, tying the longest kick ever converted in the NFL.
"You can feel it off your foot. It feels like nothing is quite there," Aubrey said, via DallasCowboys.com, late Saturday night. "It feels like nothing is there, it has no resistance. It pops off your foot. It stays on your foot for like a half a second and then it just flies. Yeah, I was pretty sure [I made it]," he said. "I had to watch it for a couple of seconds to make sure it didn't hook with the power fade. Hit it nice and pure, hit it straight. After about a second, I knew it was in."
Technically, preseason statistics don't go into the official NFL record books, so Aubrey's massive boot will be confined to highlight reels of Dallas' practice matchup with Las Vegas. Still, Cowboys coaches and teammates couldn't get enough of Saturday's kick, which would've matched Baltimore Ravens great Justin Tucker's 66-yard field goal for the longest of all time, had it occurred a few weeks later.
Here's the crazier part: The NFL's NextGen Stats estimates Aubrey's kick would've been good from 72 yards. Which would've easily broken Tucker's record, if the kick happened in a real game.
It's a significant but unsurprising development for Aubrey, considering how much the Cowboys kicker has already accomplished in a short amount of time. The 29-year-old Missouri native famously began his professional sports career on the soccer field, where he was a 2017 draft pick of MLS' Toronto FC. He only began training for football in 2019, and debuted as a pro kicker for the Birmingham Stallions, now part of the UFL spring league, starting in 2022. Converting 32 of 37 field goals in two seasons for the Stallions, Aubrey's successful transition to the gridiron convinced the Cowboys to sign him last July.
The rest is history: Aubrey made his NFL debut at 28, and he immediately challenged all-star veterans like Tucker for the title of most accurate kicker in the league. His 36 field goals made and 157 total points in 2023 led the NFL, and his 94.7% field goal rate ranked among the best in the game. Aubrey set the NFL record for the most made field goals in a row to start a career with 35.
Now, everything he does in his career is a little sweeter after the birth of his first child, his son Colton. His wife Jenn and Aubrey had their first child shortly after the team's first preseason game against the Los Angeles Rams last week. He flew back to Texas as quickly as he could following that contest to arrive in time for Colton's birth.
"Obviously baby Colton coming in and changing our lives," Aubrey said. "Being able to perform away from him means a lot for me. ... "The [Rams] game ended at like 4:39 [p.m.], and then I was in the terminal at 5:15. I got out of there. I got home at like 12:30 and we left for the hospital at 4:30. No sleep and then obviously no sleep the next couple days."
Perhaps Aubrey could break Tucker's regular season made field goal distance record in 2024 on the strength of being new father.