Brandon Aubrey enters 50 yards behind the line of scrimmage and watches the uprights grow as he marches forward.
“White Horse,” a country-rock song by Chris Stapleton, heralds his moment as more than 93,000 Dallas Cowboys fans at AT&T Stadium rise and roar. The song is played by order of quarterback Dak Prescott, who learned that it helps Aubrey focus.
Throughout the concourse and in the seats, Aubrey’s name and jersey No. 17 is worn by fans, alongside that of Prescott and wide receiver CeeDee Lamb — and of Cowboys greats like Aikman, Irvin and Smith. Last Christmas, Aubrey’s gear was in such high demand his name had to be pressed on blank jerseys in the merchandise shop at the team’s headquarters. Today there are socks printed with Aubrey’s picture and novelty T-shirts with his caricature and nickname, “The Leg.”
Six years ago, he was a software engineer and avid fantasy football fan watching games with his wife, Jenn, at their home in the Dallas suburbs when she suggested he could probably kick a field goal as well as anyone in the NFL.
It wasn’t necessarily a long shot: The couple met when Aubrey played soccer for Notre Dame, and he’d been drafted into Major League Soccer. But a lonely sojourn as a center-back with Toronto FC defined by bitterness and self-doubt destroyed any desire to play or watch the game he grew up in and led him to a 9-to-5.
“If you want a cowboy on a white horse, ridin’ off into the sunset …”
Aubrey’s walk-on song fades.
He finds his target — the middle T of the stadium’s sponsor — shining beyond the goal. On the field, he talks himself through the same process regardless of distance or circumstance. At this moment, both happen to be significant. If Aubrey makes this kick, he will hold the record for most field goals beyond 60 yards in an NFL career, at five. It’s his third season in the league.
“Three steps back,” Aubrey thinks, and recedes. “One … Two … Three … There’s your line.”
He imagines a line from where he stands to where he wants the ball to fly.
“Over two.” A wide side-shuffle. “One … Two …”
A mental checklist.
“Hips … Target … Spot …”
Out here, beyond 60, the hip gets extra notice — the only element that will change, imperceptible to most — as he slightly turns up the torque. Too much and the ball will veer wide.
Aubrey nods at veteran punter and holder Bryan Anger, who flashes a signal to long snapper Trent Sieg. Aubrey moves as the ball zips toward Anger. Head and shoulders, hips and toes. Each element must connect, his weight driving the same direction, kinetic flow, deliberate and efficient. Not too hard, not too soft. Energy precisely harnessed in 1.3 seconds from snap to contact.
There’s a kicking revolution afoot in the NFL, a league that has seen 46 field goals of 60 yards or longer in its 105-year history, more than half coming since 2020. A position once akin to a glorified ball boy is attracting better athletes, and specialized training and technological advances are pushing the limits.
After kicking a 63-yard field goal for the New Orleans Saints in 1970, Tom Dempsey held the NFL record for 43 years. But after Dempsey’s mark was first broken by the Denver Broncos’ Matt Prater 12 years ago, it has since been bested six times, with three of those coming over the past three months. Jacksonville’s Cam Little set an NFL record with a 68-yard field goal on Nov. 2, a little more than two months after he hit from 70 yards in the preseason.
Prater remembers Broncos punter and holder Britton Colquitt’s words as they prepped for a kick at the end of a half in Denver back in December 2013. “Oh sh–,” Colquitt told him, looking up from the spot. “This is for the record.” Prater hit it thin and thought it was short as Colquitt jumped on his back — “You’ve got it! You’ve got it!” — and the ball dropped just beyond the left edge of the crossbar, good from 64 yards.
Today, Prater, a 41-year-old father of four, sits in a stall inside the Buffalo Bills practice facility viewing videos of his 9-year-old son, Pax, playing quarterback. He was coaching the youth football team in Arizona, comfortably courting retirement, when the Bills called in September and asked him to step in for an injured Tyler Bass. Prater grabbed some cleats, angled the edges with a belt sander in his garage and flew from Arizona to Buffalo.
Prater knows about finding chances on the game’s margins. After bouncing around NFL training camps and practice squads for a couple of years after college, he landed as the Broncos starting kicker in 2008. That year, NFL kickers attempted 104 field goals from beyond 50 yards, and 80 were successful. In 2024, there were 279 field goals attempted over 50 yards, with 195 made.
Through his nearly two decades in the NFL, Prater has hit a league record 82 field goals from more than 50 yards, but he’s still not entirely sure why he found such success from distance. There was no secret, Prater said, other than the enjoyment he always got from kicking long.
Aside from his father showing him basic techniques when he was young, Prater never worked with a dedicated kicking coach. During his first NFL preseason with the Detroit Lions in 2006, special teams coach Chuck Priefer asked Prater how he liked the ball held on field goals. Prater wasn’t sure what to say. He’d never worried about the direction of the laces or the angle of the ball. Prater didn’t realize that he wasn’t supposed to watch the snap and eventually learned to keep his eye on the spot and start his kicking motion as the holder’s hand moved to catch the ball.
“That was the first time I started realizing that it’s not just about kicking the crap out of the ball and hoping it goes straight,” Prater said.
That self-taught approach was in line with the generation of kickers who came before him. The position was inherently something of an afterthought for NFL teams. In the mid-1990s, kicker Chris Boniol broke in each of the Cowboys’ 36 game balls every week, making sure the grip and texture were set to quarterback Troy Aikman’s liking. Several days a week, Boniol would scald the balls in hot water and run them through the team’s industrial dryers for three to four minutes to remove the wax and stretch the leather.
“That was part of our job,” Boniol said. “Instead of sitting in meetings all day, we were breaking in footballs.”
But in the 2010s, as Dempsey’s 40-year record fell, something shifted in the art of kicking.
“Everything has improved,” Boniol said. “And so the standard of performance for these kickers, the expectations, have gone through the roof. Because now there is no excuse.”
Prater experienced the evolution.
“It’s such a specialty position now,” he said. “Even the snappers and holders are so much better. … The coaching is getting better. And like any other position, guys are getting bigger, faster and stronger.”
In his 19th NFL season, Prater rarely kicks beyond 50 — he’s hit one for the Bills this year — but every week, as a fan, he marvels at his younger counterparts.
“Aubrey hasn’t stopped,” Prater said. “He just keeps getting better and better.”
Aubrey knew to take three steps back and two to the side. Even that didn’t feel quite right, so he’d shift backward, chop his feet and attack.
Brian Egan stood next to Aubrey, watching the 6-foot-2 software engineer somehow crush the ball across an empty recreational field in Frisco. He was the first hit in Aubrey’s online search for a local swing coach. The former Mississippi State kicker (and teammate of Dak Prescott) had moved from Alabama to Texas to capitalize on a rising rush of kickers in the heart of football country.
Even with Aubrey’s unpolished approach, Egan knew he’d stumbled on to something special. Aubrey was a clean sheet. A former pro athlete who could be molded into what Egan knew the next level required.
Aubrey ran at dawn, started work at 7 a.m., skipped lunch and left at 3 p.m. so he could beat rush hour on the 45-minute drive from his office in Arlington to Frisco three days a week. He’d meet Egan on the patchy grass of the B.F. Phillips Community Park, where they’d navigate sporadic sprinklers and outwait security guards who tried to chase them off the unbooked fields. For two years — with the Cowboys’ practice facility visible on the horizon five miles away — Aubrey and Egan trained together. When the park’s yellow uprights were removed, Aubrey turned to a grey lamppost in the middle of a wide field. The distant beacon became the goal — swing after swing, the ball sailing to a beam now bruised with black marks.
After two years, as Aubrey found his rhythm, Egan knew it was time. What good is a ball striking a lamppost from 60 if no one is around to see it? Egan felt Aubrey was ready to enter a free-agent kicking showcase. And for that, Aubrey needed John Carney.
The last names of 32 NFL placekickers are listed on the whiteboard in black marker — Aubrey, Little, Dicker — next to a large question, scribbled in blue: “Who can you BEAT out?”
A dozen men in their 20s and 30s lean forward on folding chairs and a couch near the entrance of Carney Coaching, a training facility in an industrial complex next to the Pacific Ocean in Carlsbad, Calif. These free agents have come to train with and learn from a sinewy 61-year-old Super Bowl champion who played 23 seasons in the NFL. Among the pupils is an office supply salesman, a golf caddie and a public works manager. Several years ago, a software engineer from Plano, Texas, sat in the same seat.
Carney stands next to a row of blue lockers at the front of the makeshift classroom. Weights clank and thud in the background as he plays a series of inspirational clips on an overhead screen.
“Try not. Do — Or do not,” Yoda tells Luke Skywalker. “There is no try.”
In Carney’s classroom, there is room for honest reflection but not self-doubt.
“Sometimes we have to fool ourselves into believing,” Carney tells his kickers. “But you’re going to have a lot more success fooling yourself and talking about it in a positive way than being a pessimist.”
Every kicker here has been through the same carousel of combines and showcases, which are mostly run by Carney and Nick Novak in San Diego and Gary Zauner in Arizona. Chandler Staton, Appalachian State ’21, worked out for the Green Bay Packers and had a preseason stint with the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He’s chasing a feeling: the rush of running onto a field in front of thousands, with the game at your foot. “I’m getting chills just talking about it,” he said.
After being cut by the Bombers, Staton and his wife moved into an RV near Carney’s camp so he could train full-time while she works remotely. “I’m a professional athlete that doesn’t get paid,” he said. “That’s my schedule.”
If Staton or his competitors perform well here, they might get noticed by a scout. If they don’t, they’re quickly dismissed. The margin of error, even on the outside of the CFL, UFL and NFL, is pitiless. But for now, optimism.
Carney points to the names on the white board.
“All these guys were sitting where you guys are — and now they are there,” he tells the group. “If they were here, you can be there.”
After hearing whispers about a new kicker with the Birmingham Stallions, John “Bones” Fassel, the Cowboys special teams coordinator, made a covert mission to a USFL game in June 2023. He left his Cowboys jacket at home and snuck onto the sidelines during warmups so he could be as close as possible as Aubrey kicked.
The Cowboys needed a kicker after Brett Maher — who once held the record for most field goals beyond 60 yards in his career (four), and put up a Cowboys-record 137 points in 2022 — faltered in the postseason, missing five point-after attempts.
Now special teams coordinator for the Tennessee Titans, Fassel has watched hundreds of kickers closely over his two-decade NFL coaching career. There are more people vying for the positions than ever before, he said — and that increase has led to bigger and stronger kickers.
Aubrey got his kick at it. And Fassel knew from the sound — the booming thud — that he was it. The height and distance of Aubrey’s kickoff, taken from the 20-yard line in the USFL at the time, confirmed it.
“The ball just fired off his foot,” Fassel said.
Fassel had little concern that Aubrey didn’t play football in college and that, beyond the combines, his only high-level competitive experience came from a handful of USFL games.
“I really think not kicking in high school or even college was probably a plus because you can tell that he hasn’t been overcoached,” Fassel said. “He hadn’t been overly analytical with anything. Everything was very natural. … You can make a case that not playing was maybe the best thing for him just because nothing he does is ever overthinking the swing.”
The outcome is a kicking technique that Fassel describes as simply “smooth.” So smooth, in fact, that Aubrey made the Pro Bowl as a rookie in 2023 and again in 2024. Prescott — who welcomed Aubrey as one of the Cowboys’ captains — nicknamed him “Butter.”
Cameron Dicker, the most accurate kicker in NFL history, strolls through the Los Angeles Chargers locker room barefoot with a wide sombrero perched on his head after a post-practice workout that he jokes was mostly focused on his biceps.
“Dicker the Kicker” is a freckled 25-year-old who has the aura of a retreat on a Kauai beach. He describes how a position that is so technical and pressure-packed is churned into something so seemingly effortless.
“Ride that level wave,” Dicker said.
He grew up in Shanghai, where he played soccer — a Liverpool fan, he didn’t see an American football, as in the ball, until he caught part of the Super Bowl on TV when he was 8. He began kicking in high school after his family moved to Texas, and has carried a measured perspective into his profession.
“You’re going to miss a kick. Everybody knows it’s going to happen, so don’t let that affect you that much,” he said. “And you’re going to make big kicks … if you get a little arrogant, you get too high with that, when you fall it’s going to be a real big fall.”
A few days earlier, the Chargers tied a game against Denver 20-20 with a touchdown and extra point late. With a minute to go, Dicker “chilled” with punter JK Scott, who took reps into a net. Each team had several timeouts, so Dicker figured they had at least five minutes. Then, with no time left, Dicker had a chance to win it from 43 yards. As he lined up, Scott looked up at him from the spot.
“Hey, I love you, man,” Scott said.
Dicker smiled. “Love you too, JK.”
A few moments later, Dicker kicked and won the game.
At 93.4 percent over 55 career games, Cameron Dicker’s field-goal percentage is the best in NFL history. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Imagn Images)
A bit east, in the Mojave Desert, Daniel Carlson is another proponent of Zen and the Art of Kicking, but he’s more meticulous about the process. The 6-foot-5 Raiders veteran first learned how to kick a football by watching YouTube videos by renowned kicking coach Jamie Kohl and views his art as a process of constant development. Carlson keeps up on the latest sports psychology books and talks to golfers, pitchers and high-percentage shooters in basketball who require consistent performance in high-pressure moments.
He has found that, with only a few opportunities in a game, putting too much weight on each kick yields worse results than practice.
“That’s really what separates a lot of careers,” he said. “I see a lot of guys at practice that are just booming, and think, ‘How is that guy not in the NFL?’ And then they get a chance, and it’s just not the same kicker all of sudden.”
Carlson goes through the same mental routine on each kick, putting his focus into something internal and controllable rather than trying to avoid the defense, the weight of the game, or the crowd noise. “If you try to tell yourself don’t think about missing, you’re going to think about missing,” he said.
When Carlson takes his steps back, he gives himself mental cues, repeating the same phrases. If a camera zoomed in on him, it would catch him mouthing the words.
“See the ball … Through the ball …” Carlson will say. And then, as he moves to kick, he says something simple like, “Hit it …”
While playing on TFC’s practice squad, Aubrey was distracted by disappointment and self-doubt. As a kicker, he’s worked hard to harness a more confident mental approach. He goes further into his own head, rather than trying to shut out the pressure. His heart pounds on the sidelines when he knows he’s about to be called on, but he slows everything down by controlling his breathing and running through positive affirmations.
“It sounds like foo-foo, but it does work,” Aubrey said. “Just telling yourself, ‘You’re ready for this. You’re the best kicker in the world.‘”
The chaos turns to white noise. His heart rate drops. Then, in the moment, it spikes.
“And this is another opportunity to show the world that.”
Every summer, NFL kickers share their thoughts with each other about everything from the mental process to technique and gear. It’s a collaboration that also includes long snappers and punters, whose skill sets and athletic demands are such peculiar parts of the game.
“You take some stuff from other guys that speak your language,” Carlson said. “It’s a different language than a lot of other football guys maybe understand.”
They often work with the same offseason swing coaches. Little, the Jaguars’ 22-year-old wunderkind, works with Kohl and Novak and soaks in details from the fraternity. Little is an encyclopedia of information on other kickers, admiring the approaches of guys like Prater and Carlson and marveling at Aubrey’s astonishing feats.
“There’s 32 kickers in the NFL, that’s the reality,” Little said. “And any time there’s a guy that goes out there, we all want each other to succeed … and we all want to share whatever is going to make the other guy successful.”
In sharing the minutia of their quirks and preferences, the kickers look to each other to find the incremental improvements. Like Aubrey, Carlson wears a soccer cleat on his kicking foot and a football cleat on the foot he plants with. The soccer cleat is a size smaller, tight enough to put bruises on his toe by the end of the game. It’s analogous to a bare-knuckle boxer, Carlson says — the cushion of a glove has less impact.
Dicker and Little both wear two soccer cleats. Little has worn the same cleat — Nike’s Mercurial Vapour 13 — since his sophomore year in college, stocking up on as many pairs as he can. He files down the front three studs on his right shoe so he can hit the ball as close to the ground as possible. Prater uses the belt sander in his garage (a trick he learned from former Detroit Lions kicker Jason Hanson); Aubrey just rubs the studs down on concrete.
Dicker doesn’t overthink his technique or training. Unlike many kickers, he doesn’t count the amount of swings he takes in practice. He kicks until he feels right, then he’s done. He does leg lifts twice a week, as well as ankle and hamstring exercises. Carlson used to keep to a kick count during the week, but now he tries to kick as much as he can, preferring quantity to help ingrain muscle memory. As workouts and recovery processes have improved, Carlson feels younger at 30 than he did when he entered the league.
Improvements in training have led to better results, but the process can be a bit counterintuitive. For example, some of the kickers routinely going long likely can’t squat much weight, Carlson says. But a focus on flexibility and recovery has allowed him to kick more in practice, which has given him a faster leg. Over time, that process should help him kick longer. There’s a balance to consider, Carlson says. Getting stronger doesn’t always help, because sometimes it diminishes accuracy.
There is also much more data available for kickers today than there was a decade ago. Trackman — a radar technology company prominent in golf and baseball — didn’t start working with kickers until five years ago, when Simon Mathieson, a company rep who kicked at Northwest Missouri State, saw an opportunity.
“Kickers account for 30 percent of points scored in the NFL,” Mathieson said. “Yet they’re the ones that generally get the least amount of practice and coaching from the staff.”
Even with more data available about ball speed, ball height at the line of scrimmage, and spin rate, kicking remains a mostly subjective art. A kicker whose best ball is 72 mph and 12 feet high at the line-of-scrimmage might be completely different from another kicker, Mathieson said. But the information supports feel and hopefully increases consistency.
“It’s just about identifying your best ball,” Mathieson said.
“It’s a lot like golfing,” Dicker said. “There are guys that like extreme analytics — ‘It has to be this’ — and there are some guys … who never watch stuff because they think it messes with them mentally.”
Thoughts on the effect of the season’s K-ball changes — which grant each team 60 balls to break in during the season for kickers, softening them for better impact — vary throughout the league. Through the first 11 weeks of the 2025 season, 39 field goals of at least 55 yards have been made. Pundits have looked to the K-ball as the main cause, which has bothered some kickers.
“I think the talent is overruling these K-balls,” said Little. “I’m telling you, guys are so good now.”
A leg race has emerged that has pushed the position to a new era of prominence. That has kickers quietly rooting for each other. As the old man of the league, Prater gets nervous when he watches his counterparts kick. Carlson is fine seeing an opponent’s kick get blocked, but he never wants to see a miss.
“I know what it takes to be in their shoes,” he said.
A sport within the game — special teams on one side, hoping to win, but also that the other guys don’t lose, exactly.
“That’s the cool thing about kickers around the NFL,” Little said. “You never want to see a guy lose their job, or not do their job. That’s the last thing anyone in the kicking world wants.”
Aubrey’s 61-yard field goal at AT&T Stadium in mid-October secured him the record for most career field goals beyond 60 and was his second beyond the mark this season.
The next day, at the team’s facility in Frisco, Aubrey sat next to Sieg — the bearded, chess-playing long snapper — on a sofa next to a cafeteria near the Cowboys locker room. A group of fans on tour spotted Aubrey, nudging each other and quickly pulling out their phones for a picture. Aubrey appeared not to notice that the sudden chatter was for him. His reserved demeanor still seems much more akin to someone proficient in Python than an NFL star with an impending contract extension likely to set a new bar for what kickers are paid.
When it comes to the accolades and fame, Aubrey carries a confident but measured sense of where he is and where he started. It was a long way to come in a short time, and there is still a long way to go.
It’s unlikely that his record for 60-yard field goals will last decades. Just as it is unlikely that new markers for distance will stand against time the way that Dempsey’s did. It took more than 40 years for Prater to find another yard. Another eight for Justin Tucker to hit from 66.
Last September, Aubrey kicked a 65-yard field goal, fueling anticipation of another record. This September, he made a 64-yard kick as time expired, sending the Cowboys to overtime against the Giants. Two days earlier, Jack Drygas, a senior at Legacy Christian Academy — around the corner from a ball-marked lamppost in Frisco — kicked a 64-yard field goal, too.
“There’s no reason guys won’t be able to hit 60-yard field goals consistently for a long time to come,” Aubrey said. “I think 70 will be the new 60.”
Last season, Brandon Aubrey became the first kicker in NFL history to record consecutive seasons with 10 or more field goals of more than 50 yards. (Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
A day after Little set an NFL record with his 68-yarder at the end of the first half in Las Vegas, Aubrey stepped onto the field at AT&T Stadium, 50 yards behind the play. Little doesn’t swing out of his shoes, but he swings harder than Aubrey and is mesmerized by how effortless the Cowboy’s motion seems: “Not every guy has that gift.”
As Aubrey approached the spot, the uprights grew. Out there, the crowd knew: 68. A share of history. Widened possibility.
“If you want a cowboy on a white horse, ridin’ off into the sunset …”
A quiet hum.
Aubrey found his target. Eyed his line.
Three back — one, two, three. Two over — one, two.
Hips … Target … Spot. He nodded. Snap.
The rise — and fall.
Wide left.
