Vikings vs. Cowboys Features an Under-the-Radar Star Duel
On Sunday, we’ll get to see the latest meeting between the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings, two franchises that have had quite the battles over the years. Others will likely get the big headlines, but there’s a decent chance the best players will be Will Reichard and Brandon Aubrey, the two placekickers.
Will Reichard vs. Brandon Aubrey
In today’s NFL, the kickers are absolutely lethal, and a handful of them are nearly automatic even from 60 yards. Reichard and Aubrey can and already have hit those kicks. This season, Aubrey ranks second with nine kicks from at least 50 yards, Reichard third with eight. They only trail Tampa Bay’s Chase McLaughlin’s ten such makes.
But we can turn it up a notch. Aubrey’s five kicks from 55 rank him tied first. Reichard has only one fewer. Aubrey is the king of long field goals, having already split the uprights on 60-yarders three times this season. Reichard has at least one such shot on his resume. His sweet spot is in the 57-59 range from a number’s perspective. Reichard and Aubrey both lead the league with four makes from at least 57 yards out.
Their paths to the NFL have been quite different.
Brandon Aubrey’s Career
Aubrey is 30 years old and didn’t enter the NFL until 2023. He went undrafted in 2022 and kicked for the Birmingham Stallions in the USFL before the Cowboys hired him. Aubrey played soccer at Notre Dame and then tried to make his breakthrough in the MLS, but failed to do so.
Once his soccer career was over, Aubrey used his degree to become a software engineer. In 2019, he was watching someone miss a field goal on TV, and his wife told him he could do that. A few years of practice with a kicking coach, and his career took off.
After three NFL seasons, Aubrey is the second-most accurate kicker in NFL history with at least 100 field goal attempts, and he has already set the all-time record for the most 60-yarders in a career.
On Friday, Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell was asked about facing the elite weapon: “You gotta understand that situational football could be different. How you handle the end of the first half could be different because between the dynamic kickoff and maybe one of the best returners in our league, and then the fact that even if you handle that play well, they’re one or two Dak completions from giving him a swing at it. You almost have to look at it like any time left on the clock, he’s gonna get a swing at it and he’s probably gonna make it. He’s made a lot of them. I don’t know what the exact numbers are of the longest ten kicks of the past few years, but I’m sure he’s got his fingerprints all over that list.”
O’Connell might not know the exact numbers, but we do. Since arriving in the league in 2023, ten kicks of at least 62 yards have been made. Of those ten, three belong to Aubrey. No other kicker has made more than one of those, including Reichard, who’s one of the eight kickers on the list.
“He’s a weapon. The fact that we’re even talking about this right now shows you that he’s a weapon in the football game,” O’Connell added.
Will Reichard’s Different Path
Unlike Aubrey, who has a soccer background, Will Reichard has always been an American Football kicker. He attended kicking camps starting in sixth grade and he was the nation’s top-ranked kicker coming out of high school, ultimately enrolling at Alabama.
At Bama, he continued to deliver. He became all-time record-holder in career points in the FBS and ended up coming to Minnesota in the sixth round of the 2024 draft. So far, he has cured the Vikings’ kicker curse.
This season, Reichard has hit 22 of 24 field goals. One of the misses may or may not hit the camera cable. He’s still perfect in his career with 61 extra point hits. His struggles after last year’s injury are long in the rearview mirror, and he’s arguably been the Vikings’ best player this season.
Earlier this season, O’Connell said about his very own weapon, “I mean, you guys saw it, to hit it [from] 62 [yards], darn near halfway up the net is something else. And I got so much confidence in Will [Reichard], it’s almost dangerous.”
Reichard holds the longest field goal in franchise history from 61 and he has made six of the seven longest.
Both teams have a kicker who can realistically attempt a kick from midfield without looking like a fool. The NFL’s longest field goal ever is a 68-yarder Jacksonville’s Cam Little made earlier this season. He also knocked down a 70-yarder in the preseason. Brandon Aubrey and Will Reichard have the legs to challenge Little if the right situation arises.
Editor’s Note: Information from PFF, Over The Cap, and Sports Reference helped with this article.