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The Dallas Cowboys are dealing with a lot of scrutiny these days. People are questioning every decision. They’re upset that Jason Garrett is the head coach, that the team calls the plays that it does, that they don’t go for it in certain moments, on and on and on.
One of the issues that people have with the Cowboys (there’s a long list as mentioned) is that Brett Maher remains the team’s kicker. Both Stephen Jones and Jason Garrett said on Friday that the Cowboys would be sticking with their kicker through his struggles and it’s hard to understand why.
Brett Maher literally misses kicks in more than half of his games with the Cowboys
Counting the two playoff games that the Cowboys played last season, Brett Maher has 30 total appearances with the Dallas Cowboys.
In all fairness to Maher he was replacing a franchise icon and one of the most reliable kickers in NFL history in Dan Bailey. It’s hard to follow in footsteps like that, but he’s done worse than simply not being Dan Bailey.
Kickers can miss more than field goals. They can obviously miss extra points, too. In all 30 games that Brett Maher has appeared in with the Cowboys he has missed a kick of some kind (a field goal or extra point) in 16 of them. That’s more than half.
This is pretty unacceptable for any team let alone one that’s supposed to have high standards and expectations like the Dallas Cowboys. They’ve continued to roll with Maher throughout this season despite his struggles and it’s come back to bite them in several of their losses.
Maher has missed a kick in more than half of this season’s games
Brett Maher has only missed one extra point in his career and that came last season, but he’s been really shaky at field goals this season.
Overall Maher has only made 19 of his 28 field goal attempts this season, but when you isolate each game from one another his misses appear more damning.
The Dallas Cowboys have played in 12 games this season. Maher has missed at least one field goal in seven of them. Seven out of 12. That is also more than half for all of the non math majors out there. That is not good at all.
Maher’s field goal percentage this season is 67.9% (Dan Bailey’s is 88.2% if you want to feel awful) yet the Cowboys continue to believe in him. It’s nice that they want to feel confident in Maher and his abilities but the data from 75% of the season is overwhelming. He is not a good kicker at this moment and simply cannot be trusted.
Continuing to trot Maher out there over and over again isn’t fair to the rest of the team or even to Maher himself.