Cowboys’ Brett Maher suffers historical playoff meltdown, Mike McCarthy hints that team will stick with kicker

The Dallas Cowboys played a nearly perfect game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday, well, except for one player. Brett Maher suffered a total meltdown on a night where he missed a total of four extra points, going just 1-for-5 in the Cowboys’ 31-14 win. 

The performance wasn’t just bad, it was historically bad. With the four misses, Maher became the first kicker in NFL history to miss four extra points in a game. With each miss, it was clear that the Cowboys were getting more and more frustrated with him on the sideline. 

By the time he missed his third kick, Dak Prescott was scowling on the sideline while Peyton and Eli Manning seemed to be in shock. 

Maher seems to have caught a case of the yips. Not only did he miss his first four attempts against the Buccaneers, but he also missed his only attempt in Week 18, which brought his streak of consecutive misses to five. However, that streak ended in the fourth quarter Monday when Maher finally made an extra point, which elicited a loud cheer from the crowd at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. 

Despite this struggles, Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy made it sound like the team plans to stick with Maher for their divisional round playoff game against the 49ers on Sunday. 

“We need to get him ready to go (for San Francisco),” McCarthy said, via NBCDWF. “We need him. He’s been super clutch for us all year.”

Maher also seems to have the support of his teammates. 

One especially supporttve teammate was Dak Prescott. 

“I’m Money Maher’s biggest fan,” Prescott said following the win. “I talked to him individually after the game, just told him, ‘Hey let that go, we’re going to need it’ I just played like s— a week ago, so that happens.”

The Cowboys kicker struggled on extra points at times during the regular season, but it never got this bad. During the 2022 season, he hit 50 of 53 extra points, which was good for a 94.3% conversion rate that ranked 22nd for any kicker who attempted 15 or more extra points. 

Although he couldn’t hit from short range on Monday, Maher has come up clutch multiple times over the year and he’s had no problem hitting long kicks for the Cowboys. Not only did he go 9 of 11 from 50 yards or more in 2022, but he also holds the NFL record for most field goals of 60 yards or more with four. It’s the short stuff that’s been troublesome. 

Since the extra point was moved to 33 yards back in 2015, some kickers have struggled, but they almost never struggle like Maher did on Monday night. As a matter of fact, only one other kicker has even missed three extra points in any game over the past seven years and that was Matt Gay, who went 2-for-5 while playing for the Buccaneers in a 35-22 win against the Falcons in November 2019 (Gay now plays for the Rams). 

Besides Gay and Maher, you have to go all the way back to 1993 to find a game where a kicker missed three extra points (Roger Ruzek did it while playing for the Eagles), but no one else has missed four. 

The upside for the Cowboys is that Maher was the only player who really struggled during Dallas’ 31-14 win. The Cowboys destroyed the Buccaneers thanks in large part to a historically big game from Dak Prescott, who set a franchise record by totaling five touchdowns. 

For a full breakdown of everything that happened in the game, be sure to check out our takeaways by clicking here.