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The Cowboys struck gold when they inked USFL star Brandon Aubrey to be their new placekicker in 2023. In one of the biggest gambles of the season they turned up their noses at the many veteran kickers on the market and bet the farm on the 28-year-old rookie. It’s safe to say that paid off immensely.
Going 36-for-38, Aubrey stamped his ticket to the Pro Bowl, winning first team All-Pro in his first year. He booted over 90 percent of his kicks for touchback and went 10-for-10 from 50+ yards. He’s the perfect combination of power and accuracy. Unfortunately, the new NFL kicking format may send him, and a few other top field goal kickers, to the bench for kickoffs.
In a quest to make the game of football a safer place, the NFL is once again implementing new rules for kickoffs. These rules fundamentally change the way teams return kicks, cover kicks and even how they populate their rosters. It may also displace some placekickers in the process.
Under the new format, placekickers tee off from their own 35-yard-line. The coverage unit lines up with one foot on the return team’s 40 while the opposing team situates between the 35 and 30, with up to two return men inside the 20. The kicking team can’t move until the ball has been kicked, reducing the speed of collisions and presumably the frequency of injuries as well.
The consequence of this is a kick return takes on the appearance of a regular football play with kickers serving a real role as a tackler. Teams who don’t want to expose their kicker to injury are likely to shy away from such situations. Kansas City has already announced they may not be risking their kicker Harrison Butker to kickoffs in 2024, and other teams are expected to follow.
Proven kickers are extremely valuable for playoff hopeful football teams. Games are often determined by razor thin margins and replacing an All-Pro placekicker midseason could be disastrous for a team like the Cowboys. No one wants to devote an entire roster spot to a kickoff specialist but if someone like the punter could handle kickoffs, field goal kickers could be spared from such injury risks.
Bryan Anger, the Cowboys punter, is himself a valuable special teams player. At age 35, he’s one of the NFL’s most trusted and highest paid players at his respective position. The 2x Pro Bowler has been a fixture in Dallas over the past three seasons and while he’s important for their success, he’s not as important as Aubrey is as a field goal kicker.
Kicking and punting are obviously very different motions and by no means mutually inclusive skills, but many kickers and punters possess a certain level of kicking prowess that overlaps. A full offseason and training camp seem like plenty of time to get a punter up-to-speed on what it takes to be a decent kickoff specialist, especially for someone as athletic as Anger.
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While Anger hasn’t attempted kicks since coming to Dallas, he does have eight kickoffs on his resume, the last two of which came with Houston in 2020. His 63.1-yard average would put his average inside the five-yard line, executing the play exactly how the NFL designed it.
Aubrey didn’t show durability concerns in his only NFL season, but he wasn’t forced into many tackling situations either. It’s possible the Cowboys could ask him to kickoff and backoff, staying out of the play as a much as humanly possible in order to preserve his health and safety. But that would give the returning team a decided advantage. It’s also possible the Cowboys would ask him to kick touchbacks all day. But under the new format, kicks sent into the end zone for touchbacks will be placed at the 30-yard line to dissuade this brand of avoidance. The NFL wants returns.
No one wants to see the Cowboys Pro Bowl punter getting hurt trying to tackle a ball carrier on a kickoff but he may ultimately be more replaceable than the Cowboys All-Pro field goal kicker. It’s just one more thing to monitor in training camp as the Cowboys prepare for the new kickoff format in 2024.