Poll: Do you feel more confident in Brett Maher after he went six for six on Saturday?

The Dallas Cowboys entered their third preseason game of 2019 with a lot of questions and thankfully emerged with some answers.

Perhaps a microcosm for this is defensive end Taco Charlton. Up until a few days ago there were plenty of people willing to give away his roster spot to the first person they saw, but given his performance against the Houston Texans people are suddenly open to the idea that he can potentially be a contributor for the defense. This is why the preseason is important.

One of the most-criticized Cowboys throughout training camp and preseason has undoubtedly been kicker Brett Maher. We all know the story. A year ago nobody thought much of Maher and after a big kick, ironically, against the Texans we all found out that the team was rolling with him over Dan Bailey. He made some big field goals and missed a couple of legitimate consequence in 2018, but overall the decision by Dallas to go with him was proven correct.

As mentioned, Maher has struggled for the last good stretch of time. He entered Saturday night against the Texans having missed kicks in both preseason games to date, but a lot of people gave him a pass for last week against the Los Angeles Rams given the pacific winds (this is what being a meteorologist must feel like!). Inside the confines of AT&T Stadium he knew a lot was going to be expected from him and he sort of delivered on all of it.

Brett Maher went a perfect six for six against Houston

The Cowboys dominated the other team from Texas by a score of 34-0 on Saturday night. Preseason or not, that always feels good.

There are a lot of ways in football mathematics to get to 34 points but the Cowboys took the path of least resistance: four touchdowns and two field goals. This meant that Brett Maher was tasked with being successful on six overall kicks, something that he was able to do.

What’s interesting to me at this point in analysis of Brett Maher is where he’s kicking from. It’s been said before that he has an issue with kicks from the right hash and we had seen that show up in his field goal attempts through the preseason.

It’s important to note that kickers can choose where they want to kick from on extra points so every extra point attempt, and there were a lot on Saturday, is seemingly up to Maher’s preference. You’ll note that he took all of his XPs from the left hash and only had one kick against the Texans from the right (his longest of the night, for whatever that’s worth).

• Extra Point Attempt: Left Hash
• Extra Point Attempt: Left Hash
• 36-Yard Field Goal (Good): Right Hash
• Extra Point Attempt: Left Hash
• 23-Yard Field Goal (Good): Left Hash
• Extra Point Attempt: Left Hash

It’s certainly not a bad thing that Maher was perfect on Sunday, but if you want to nitpick you can note that we still don’t totally know how his right hash problems are doing. It’s possible that they’re fixed altogether or it’s possible that they creep up, say in an important moment in the fourth quarter a few weeks from now. That wouldn’t be ideal.

Overall it’s hard to envision the Cowboys bringing in competition for Maher at this point, especially because they didn’t do so after the first two weeks of the preseason. It seems like he is indeed going to be the team’s kicker when Week 1 begins two weeks from now, the final question is how confident do you feel in that?