The Cowboys have hosted an ongoing kicker competition but a blast from the past — and not a good one — in Brett Maher seems to have won the job.
There are a number of holes the Dallas Cowboys entered the offseason needing to fill with some of those questions leading into training camp. But given the way the special teams has performed in recent years, a lot of fans were honed in on the kicking competition.
On Tuesday as rosters had to be cut down to 80 players, though, the Cowboys may have settled that matter — and it’s a solution that the worried fans won’t feel particularly good about.
Dallas made the decision to cut Lirim Hajrallahu on Tuesday, leaving the team’s former kicker, Brett Maher, as the only player at the position left on the roster, seemingly indicating that he’ll be the guy.
Cowboys: Brett Maher winning kicker competition won’t put fans at ease
Maher was the kicker in Dallas for the 2018 and part of the 2019 campaign as well. However, after making just two-thirds of his field-goal attempts and missing two key attempts in primetime games that ended up being losses, he was released for veteran Kai Forbath.
He has since seen some brief time with the Jets and Saints but now all the roads have led back to the Cowboys and it’s hard for fans to feel confident in a kicker who was cut just three years ago for not performing up to par.
Perhaps there will be another kicker or two brought into the building moving forward and Maher hasn’t outright won the job just yet, but that’s looking like the case as things currently stand.
For the sake of fans, here’s to hoping that Maher can even get above that 70% mark this season if he is indeed the starting kicker. Baby steps.