USA TODAY International Edition
Maher shows kickers human
The four extra points Dallas Cowboys kicker Brett Maher missed Monday night set off groaning, screaming, helmet- smashing and, on Twitter, a trending hashtag. # KickersArePeopleToo Maher is a unique person. The only one in history to miss four extra points in a game whose job status remains less- than- solid after the Cowboys’ 31- 14 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers prompted jokes at Maher’s expense.
“There’s no lower hanging fruit than a kicker who struggles for people to pick on,” said Jamie Kohl, who has served as a kicking consultant for the Chicago Bears and Carolina Panthers.
But in this case, Kohl said, he has a personal relationship with the kicker. In the summer of 2021, Maher helped him at a kicking camp held in honor of Maher’s former teammate Sam Foltz, a punter at the University of Nebraska who died in a car accident in 2016.
“He drove out to the middle of nowhere in Nebraska and helped me with the camp in the middle of a cornfield,” Kohl said of Maher, whose family lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Gerald Foltz, Sam’s father, said he sent a text message to Maher shortly after the Cowboys defeated the Bucs and secured a matchup against the San Francisco 49ers in a divisional game.
“I told him it was a great win and time to prepare for the next challenge,” Foltz said, adding there was no need to mention the misses. “He’s a high character guy.”
Maher is playing his fourth full season in the NFL and in 2019 set a Cowboys record when he made a 63- yard field goal. This season he is 9- for- 11 on field- goal tries of 50 yards or more; 6- for- 7 from 40 to 49 yards; and 29- for- 32 on field goals overall. He was 50 of 53 on extra points before Monday’s game, during which he made his fifth and final point- after attempt.
“An amazing season,” said John Carney, a two- time Pro Bowler who kicked in the NFL from 1988 to 2010. “He’s extremely talented.”
But he’s also the same guy who missed four extra points – the first two wide right, the third one wide left and the fourth bouncing off the right goalpost.
“Unfortunately last night is what people will remember him a lot for,” Kohl said.
Maher, 33, is a husband and father of two young girls.
He and his wife, Jenna, met in high school and were dating when Maher walked on to the football team at Nebraska. He developed into a two- time All- Big Ten pick as a kicker, the team’s starting punter and a mentor.
In 2012, Maher was a redshirt junior when in came a walk- on punter, Sam Foltz. Gerald Foltz said Maher worked with his son and “showed him the ropes” with punting and holding.
Four years later, Maher was bouncing around the Canadian Football League when he learned the devastating news: Sam Foltz, who had developed into one of the nation’s top punters at Nebraska by 2016, died in a car accident that July.
Gerald Foltz said he reached out to Maher in 2021 to ask if he’d participate in the memorial kicking camp run by Kohl in Greeley, Nebraska, near the Foltz’s family town.
“He was wanting to come out because he likes working with young kids,” Foltz said. “My oldest son put together goalposts out there. The next day Brett was working with all those kids and while I was inside I kept hearing this sound. It sounded like a 12- gauge shotgun. So I walked out and he’s kicking 60- yard field goals out in the middle of a cornfield.”
Last summer, Foltz said, Maher returned to Greeley with his daughters when a stretch of highway was named in Sam Foltz’s honor.
“It’d kind of funny,” he said. “A receiver can drop two or three balls and a linebacker can miss two or three tackles. That’s never talked about,” Foltz said. “But a kicker can make 50 straight kicks as a pro and miss one and no one forgets it.”
Well, he missed four – but former kickers who witnessed Maher’s performance suggested the empathy should go only so far.
Todd Peterson, who kicked in the NFL between 1994 and 2005, said he called Jason Elam, another former NFL kicker, on Monday night after Ryan Succop of the Bucs boomed the opening kickoff.
He said the two marveled at how far today’s kickers hammer the ball.
“And the first thing Jason said was, ‘ Aren’t you glad our extra points were from 20 yards and not 33?’ ” Peterson recalled. “Which is a difference. There’s no doubt about it. Now, does it excuse missing extra points? No way in the world. I mean, you’re expected to make those.
“It was brutal.”
Elam, a three- time Pro Bowler who kicked in the NFL from 1993 to 2009, used a golf analogy to explain Maher’s record- setting woes while suggesting things can go awry for any kicker.
“If you start trying to aim it instead of just trusting your swing, bad things are going to happen,” Elam said. “Gosh, he didn’t miss them by much. … I feel like he needs to drop a bag of balls, hit like 30 or 40 of them and get his confidence back and say, ‘ Hey, it just was a bad evening’ and forget about it.
“I got a feeling Brett will play for another 10 years. But we’re talking about the short term, and the team needs to have confidence in him, and he needs to have confidence in himself.”
The mental side of kicking is nothing new to Maher.
In October he told The Dallas Morning News that he participated in an immersive mental training program over the past five years and he works with a performance psychology expert.
Yet a case of the yips still got Maher on Monday night.
Said Kohl: “I can’t explain it other than it happens in basketball quite a bit, it happens in golf, it happens in baseball all the time, where people hit a slump and something that is routine for them becomes harder. And I think that’s what happened.”
Carney said he has been texting Maher for a few years in hopes of getting him to Carney’s training facility in the San Diego area. So far, Carney said, Maher has politely declined but has continued to exchange emails.
“Most of the kickers and punters are just good people, hard- working people,” he said. “The good ones that have been around for a long time, they don’t walk around shaking their fist and ( saying) ‘ I’m the greatest in the world.’ Because they know the next play something could go sideways and they’re going to have to live through that experience and move forward and ignore the critics.
“Because the critics come out of the woodwork if something goes sideways.”