Brandon Aubrey: How former MLS Draft pick became the NFL's most lethal kicker with the Dallas Cowboys

Every young player dreams of hearing their name called on draft day, and Aubrey is one of the lucky few who had that opportunity. Every young player also dreams of playing for their hometown team. Aubrey is lucky in that regard, too, as he suits up for America's team, the Cowboys. The road there didn't come via the gridiron, but rather the pitch.

Aubrey was one of many players to emerge out of the Dallas area and onto the pro scene. He was no exception, having shone locally as a youth player for Dallas Texans SC, the club that produced the likes of future U.S. men's national team stars Clint Dempsey and Omar Gonzalez. As a high-schooler, he was an award-winner at Plano Senior High before growing into a role at Notre Dame, where he was one of the best defenders in the country entering the MLS Draft.

On a day that saw future USMNT star Miles Robinson go second overall to Atlanta United, Aubrey was selected at No.21 by Toronto FC. And thus started a professional career that no one could have ever predicted.

Those who follow MLS know how the importance of the Draft has dwindled in recent years. With clubs largely focusing on their own academies, few MLS Draft picks ever really make an impact at the senior level and, unfortunately for Aubrey, that was the case with his career at Toronto FC.

“[Toronto] tried to make it easy on me and mentioned that they were going to loan me full-time to the USL [lower-division] side so I could go out and get some experience leading a young core of players coming up through the academy,” Aubrey told MLSSoccer.com. “And I kind of got lost in that transition, where I'm with the first team, I'm in that first team locker room, but I'm out to training with the second team before the first team gets there.

“And then while the first team is training, I'm going through my meetings and getting my food, and then I'm out of there. So it was kind of a weird one, a lonely one, one that I might not have been ready for the challenge of.”

He spent that one season with Toronto FC II before being released from his contract. Ahead of the 2018 season, he was picked up by the Philadelphia Union's second team, Bethlehem Steel, but, after just one season there, he was released yet again.

“I would say I wasn't fully prepared for that first opportunity in MLS, where you get on a superstar team, where you have theMichael Bradley, Jozy Altidore, Sebastian Giovincos that you've been watching your whole life, where you followed it really closely and maybe have that feeling where you might not actually belong,” Aubrey told MLS.

“So that was the biggest test for me, probably a thing I didn't get over quick enough in MLS, and by the time I had gotten over it and started to perform well in practices, the decision had already been made.”

And so, at just 23, Aubrey was at a crossroads, staring down the end of an all-too-brief career as a professional athlete. As it turned out, though, his dreams of being a pro athlete weren't over; he was just playing the wrong sport.

In the end, credit goes to Aubrey's wife, Jenn. If not for her, there's no way he'd have gotten this far.

Out of work and doing some real soul searching, Aubrey found himself doing what most Americans do on an average winter Sunday: watching the NFL. That day proved anything but average, though, as, after watching a kicker miss a long field goal, Jenn said words that changed the trajectory of Aubrey's career, and life.

"You could do that".

And so he tried. After getting out onto a field to prove that he could, in fact, place kick, Aubrey began training with kicking coach Brian Egan as he started his transition to football. Off the field, he worked full-time as a software engineer and trained in the mornings and evenings. It began to pay off in 2022 when Aubrey was chosen to be the kicker for the Birmingham Stallions in the USFL, a newly-formed spring football league created to fill the needs of a hungry fanbase desperate for more football once the NFL season ends.

That league largely featured up-and-comers desperate for an NFL chance. Aubrey was one, having taken a 50 percent pay cut from his day job to join the Stallions with the hopes of someday making it to the world's biggest league.

And, after two seasons in the USFL, the call came. Aubrey was going home.

For the uninitiated, the Cowboys occupy a unique space in the NFL. They're the Manchester United of the league: the team that many love, but many, many more hate with every fiber of their being. They're the most valuable NFL team and are known as "America's team".

Like Manchester United, though, the Cowboys are a team desperate for a return to the glory days. They dominated the 90s, led by stars Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith but, in the years since, the team has struggled to recapture the magic. They've made it to eight Super Bowls, but have not reached the big game since 1996.

This season, like many before it, there's hope down in Dallas. After a 12-5 season that saw them finish atop the NFC East, the Cowboys head into the NFL Playoffs among the favorites. In the NFC, the San Francisco 49ers seem the clear frontrunner, but the Cowboys are just behind them among the teams hoping to make a run to this year's Super Bowl.

Led by quarterback Dak Prescot, superstar linebacker Michah Parsons and receiving sensation CeeDee Lamb, the Cowboys have the pieces to make it. However, playoff games are often defined by small margins, which is where their big weapon, Aubrey, fits into the picture.

Kicking, by nature, is a very lonely job. You're part of the team, but also not totally. While the other 50-ish guys put on the pads and hit each other over and over, kickers practice off in their little corner, never really getting in amongst the action.

Still, so many seasons, careers, and legacies, come down to those kicks. Tom Brady may not have become Tom Brady if not for Adam Vinatieri's kicking. With games on the line, sometimes it comes down to that one kick going through those uprights way downfield.

“As a kicker, you've got to have a very short-term memory. Even if you go out and make that first 59-yarder, you can't sit there and celebrate about it because you know you're going to have some more work to do, and it's very mentally taxing,” Aubrey told MLS. “It's all in your mind. You've drilled it millions of times. You know what you need to do to make the kick. Now can you just go out there in the pressure-filled moment and do it?”

After a strong showing in the USFL, Aubrey was plucked out of relative obscurity by the Cowboys in July. He would be given the chance to win a job in training camp, and there are few jobs more tenuous than that of Cowboys placekicker. There's no patience for failure in the kicking position and careers are often cut short by one or two bad misses.

The thing is that Aubrey never really missed.

After botching his first extra point, Aubrey proved automatic for the Cowboys, setting an NFL record by making the first 19 field goal attempts of his career. He ultimately extended that record to 35 in a row before seeing a kick blocked in the final week of the season.

In Week 14 against the hated Philadelphia Eagles, Aubrey became the first kicker in NFL history to make two field goals from 59 or more yards in the same game. He went perfect, 10 for 10, on kicks of 50 yards or more. And, by the end of the season, he was recognized as a First Team All-Pro selection as the best kicker in the entire NFL.

With the regular season now complete, the Cowboys are heading to crunch time, and it begins this Saturday with the start of the NFL Playoffs.

The Cowboys begin their playoff journey on Sunday as they'll play host to another legacy team in the Green Bay Packers. Led by young quarterback Jordan Love, the Packers finished 9-8 this season, just squeaking into the playoffs and earning a date with Dallas.

Aubrey will undoubtedly play a part. He'll be on extra point duty, of course, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see him step up for a big field goal or two throughout this Cowboy run, however long it lasts. Regardless of how far the Cowboys go, though, it seems Aubrey is here to stay, having proven himself among the NFL's best.

Who could have seen that coming? From MLS Draft pick to Super Bowl hopeful, Aubrey has made it as a professional athlete in a way even he could never have imagined.

"Going back three years, working as a software engineer and grinding away in my off time trying to get an opportunity, the USFL comes around," he told the Cowboys official website. "I'm very grateful for that. These are my wildest dreams and they've come true. Just trying to keep going."