First, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said his team is wholeheartedly behind struggling kicker Brett Maher going into Sunday’s divisional round playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers. He then turned and said the team was “watching” another kicker.
The Cowboys eventually split the baby and added new kicker Tristan Vizcaino to the practice team Wednesday, but only as “insurance.” according to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero. Presumably insurance against Maher, who had a meltdown like Monday night’s when he missed four straight extra points in Tampa.
What the Cowboys are doing is not normal in the modern NFL. For one, if Vizcaino is truly “insurance,” he would need to be lifted off the practice team and made active alongside Maher on game day. It is unusual for a team to have two active kickers unless there are injury concerns or concerns that one of the kickers has a leg too weak for kickoff duties. If Vizcaino is insurance in case Maher falters during practice week, the team may set their acting kicker to default; Having someone on your back all week can certainly not be good for your confidence. Ironically, issues with extra points last year may have made it difficult for Vizcaino to assert themselves. He’s 11-of-12 in field goals in four-team stints over the past three years but missed a whopping five extra points on just 15 attempts in 2021. In his four full regular seasons and 134 extra point attempts, Maher had missed just six as of Monday night.
Personnel changes aside, the team’s candid comments about Maher’s performance are also not typical of the NFL or professional sports in general. Special teams coordinator John Fassel was candid Tuesday that Maher had the “yips.” defined by Merriam-Webster as “a state of nervous tension interfering with an athlete’s performance of a crucial action”.
Fassel also offered explanations for some of Maher’s missed extra points. He said that on the second miss, officials stopped defending champion Bryan Anger from his usual practice of using a patch of painted white grass to mark where he would place the ball.
“I hadn’t seen a memo or discussion about it. … I didn’t even know about it until our keeper came to tell me what happened,” Fassel said. “It’s supposedly been emphasized all season, but it’s never been said to me in my entire career. It’s not an apology in any way, it’s just very unique that this happened.”
Fassel said the team was left with their third (and final) shot for the third try and that that ball was not properly “refined” for pre-game use.
“A lot of stuff, just the perfect storm for a bad day,” he said. Part of that storm was self-inflicted, however: the two balls that were lost did so because Maher angled his kicks so much that the ball missed the shot net and went into the stands. NFL pundits said they’ve never heard of a team losing a K-Ball, let alone two.
For the time being, the protagonist of a massive playoff game between two of the NFL’s most famous and talented teams is a 6-foot-1, 183-pound kicker.