The Dallas Cowboys played nearly perfect football during the first half of a Monday night playoff game in Tampa Bay, with the exception of one player. Brett Maher suffered a complete meltdown during the first half as he missed three extra points.
Maher then missed a fourth extra point in the third quarter after the Cowboys scored another touchdown to take a 24-0 lead.
Not only was the performance bad, it was historically bad. With the four errors, Maher became the first player in NFL history to miss four extra points in a regular season or playoff game (no player has missed even three extra points in a playoff game). With each miss, it was clear that the Cowboys were getting more and more frustrated with him on the sidelines.
By the time he missed his third kick, Dak Prescott was sulking while Peyton and Eli Manning looked in shock.
It seems that Maher has caught a state of prophecies. Not only did he miss four in the first three quarters against the Buccaneers, but he also missed his only attempt in Week 18, bringing his streak of consecutive errors to five. However, that streak ended in the fourth quarter on Monday when Maher finally hit an extra point, prompting a loud cheer from the crowd at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
The Cowboys kicker struggled for extra points during the regular season, but it didn’t get that bad. Through the 2022 season, he racked up 50 of his 53 extra points, which was good for a 94.3% conversion rate that ranks 22nd for any kicker who has attempted 15 or more extra points.
Maher has never had a problem hitting long kicks in his career. Not only has he gone 9 of 11 of 50 yards or more in 2022, but he’s also Holds the NFL record for most field goals From 60 yards away with four. It’s the short stuff that was annoying though.
Although the Kickers have struggled some since the extra point was moved to 33 yards in 2015, they’ve never struggled like this. As a matter of fact, only one other player has missed three extra points in a game over the past seven years and that was Matt Jay, who went 2-for-5 while playing for the Buccaneers in a 35-22 win over the Falcons in November 2019 (like me he plays now in rams).
Besides Jay and Maher, you have to go 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 missed four.
The upside for the Cowboys is that Maher was the only player who really struggled. The Cowboys went into halftime with an 18-0 lead thanks in large part to Dak Prescott, who hit three touchdowns. Not only did he score on a one-yard run, but he also threw two TD passes to Dalton Schultz. The Cowboys then pushed their lead to 24-0 when Prescott threw another TD, which went to Michael Gallup.
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