Cowboys free agency 2023: Dallas should absolutely be interested in kicker Brandon McManus

There are a handful of names that we have been talking about here at Blogging The Boys for the last month and one of them isn’t even on the Dallas Cowboys roster.

We are talking here about veteran kicker Robbie Gould, the Robbie Gould who just so happens to be a free agent. Much ink has been spent across the virtual pages of BTB clamoring for the Cowboys to bring in Gould seeing as how Dallas really doesn’t have a kicker to rely on for the 2023 season, and given that this is the case it has served as a lot of potential leverage for Gould in any hypothetical discussions with the team.

Circumstances changed a bit on Tuesday though when the Denver Broncos surprisingly released kicker Brandon McManus. The Broncos have been in a state of, um, we’ll call it transition over the last year, and with Sean Payton now running the show it appears that they want to go in a different direction. That direction may wind up being Brett Maher of all people. Seriously.

Whatever the Broncos choose to do is up to them. Facts are that McManus is available, the Cowboys have a void, and this needs to happen.

The Cowboys should absolutely be interested in kicker Brandon McManus

Dallas special teams coordinator John Fassel recently said that “anybody on Earth” would be under consideration to be the next kicker for the Cowboys, and while the Broncos stadium is a mile high as far as altitude is concerned that is still within Earth’s airspace.

A moment ago we lightly joked about the Broncos considering Brett Maher as their next placekicker, and while things did not end well with him and the Cowboys, it is certainly worth mentioning that he was a very fine option last season. Again, the end was not good and given the extreme Not Good™️ nature of it bringing Maher back has always seemed rather unlikely.

The Cowboys have made their hay at kicker over the last three seasons (the John Fassel era on special teams) with Greg Zuerlein for the first two and Maher for the most recent. Here is how both McManus and the aforementioned Robbie Gould stack up against them. Note that we are looking at 2020-2022 entirely for both McManus and Gould here while just 2020-2021 for Zuerlein and 2022 for Maher (the Cowboys portions of their time over the last three years).

Stathead

You will note that this does not exactly speak glowingly of McManus but it is worth mentioning that 14 of his 19 misses over the last three years have all come from beyond 50+ yards. Given that he has been the kicker in Denver of all places he has been called upon to try and hit from downtown quite a bit. From inside of 50, though, McManus is pretty much money.

Of course this was sort of the case with Greg Zuerlein for the two years we mentioned, but he began to really struggle even with extra points and that is not an existing issue for McManus.

Simply put, McManus offers the Cowboys much of what they have had/stumbled into over the last two years with Zuerlein and Maher, but he does not have the baggage that either of them accumulated during their time with a star on their helmets. McManus is able to hit the long ball which keeps the Cowboys’ willingness to play it within their range of options and almost more importantly than anything else, McManus is now available. The Cowboys need somebody. Literally almost anybody.

This makes sense. It needs to happen. Hopefully it will.