Brandon Aubrey has become one of the best kickers in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys, but his road to stardom has been far from linear.
Aubrey, 31, first played professional soccer in Major League Soccer (MLS) and then the United Soccer League (USL) before hanging up the spikes.
“I wasn’t ready to retire from soccer, but when I looked around at the environment, I didn’t perform as well as I needed to stick on a roster and I got cut a couple of times. And at that point, there wasn’t a whole lot of money in soccer at the second tier. So, I slipped from the MLS into the USL,” Aubrey told OutKick in a recent interview.
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Brandon Aubrey of Notre Dame was selected 21st overall by Toronto FC at the 2017 MLS SuperDraft in Los Angeles, Calif., on Jan. 13, 2017. (Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“I had to really take a long, hard look at it, see if it was worth pursuing, and I could make triple the money I was making in that league as a software engineer, which my degree was in.”
Aubrey said he had just gotten married to his wife, Jenn, and didn’t want to set his family back , so into software engineering he went. However, working as a software engineer wasn’t very fun for Aubrey.
Aubrey said that Jenn had a good, stable job and pushed him to pursue a career as an NFL kicker.
“With that support and a lot of hard work and commitment we were able to shift over towards being a kicker, and got a job in the USFL and eventually got noticed at the NFL level and was able to get a job here,” Aubrey said.
Aubrey is in his fourth season with the Cowboys and has made the Pro Bowl in each of his first three seasons. He has made 127 of his 146 field-goal attempts with a long of 65 yards, while nailing 146 of 151 extra points.
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Brandon Aubrey #17 of the Dallas Cowboys kicks a field goal against the New York Giants during an NFL game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Sept. 14, 2025. (Getty Images)
One of his 127 made field goals stands out more than the rest.
The New York Giants had gone up 37-34 in Week 2 of the 2025 season with just 25 seconds left in the game. It looked like the Cowboys were going to go 0-2 to start the year.
“They just put the dagger in us where they scored a long touchdown. to Nabers and he did the night-night celebration,” Aubrey said. “We had like 12 seconds to go get 10 yards, got it and then we were in field-goal position and that’s still a pretty coin-flippy field goal, maybe even less than a coin flip for historical statistics.”
While a 64-yard field goal to tie the game might seem like less than a coin flip for Aubrey, he made it look easy. He nailed the kick to force overtime.
“To be able to go and hit that one through the uprights was awesome,” Aubrey said.
However, his day wasn’t done there. Aubrey made a 46-yard field goal as the clock expired in overtime to give the Cowboys a thrilling 40-37 win.
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SHIFT HAPPENS
In the chaos of life, and in Aubrey’s case, multiple career changes, sometimes your smile can suffer. The Pro Bowl kicker said he didn’t take good care of his smile as an adult and credited Invisalign for helping him restore his confidence.
“If you smile, I think that shows a lot of your personality. And for me, I put a lot of time and effort into my smile as a as a young kid. I guess I could say my parents put that time and effort into it and it was in a good spot and then shift happens. I didn’t take good enough care of it as a college athlete and a young adult and my smile shifted as well. I think Invisalign clear liners are a fantastic fit for me as I try to invest in my smile, my overall health, my confidence,” Aubrey, who spoke on behalf of Invisalign, said.
“You look good, you feel good, you play good.”
