An important deadline is approaching for Brandon Aubrey. Here’s what to know – Nick Harris, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Will the Cowboys ever get a long-term deal done with Brandon Aubrey?
Brandon Aubrey’s free agency
Prior to the start of free agency, the Cowboys placed a second-round tender on Aubrey. If any team were to sign Aubrey in free agency, it would have to give Dallas a second-round pick — but that hasn’t happened.
Kickers are rarely, if ever, worth second-round picks. Since 2000, only three kickers have been drafted in the first two rounds: Sebastian Janikowski in 2000 (No. 17 overall), Mike Nugent in 2005
(No. 47 overall) and Roberto Aguayo in 2016 (No. 59 overall). Of previous kickers to get the second-round tender, none have been signed by outside teams.
In 2026, the same can be said for Aubrey. While he has yet to sign his second-round tender with the Cowboys, he also hasn’t received a contract offer from any other team.
Now, Aubrey has until Friday, April 17, to receive an offer from another team before Dallas retains his rights for the 2026 season. At that point, he would have two choices: sign the second-round tender and play on a one-year, $5.811 million contract or hold out for a long-term deal.
Cowboys offered Aubrey to be highest-paid kicker
When speaking at the NFL combine, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said the team continues to have “long-term plans” for Aubrey in Dallas. He’s shown that by offering a contract to Aubrey both before and after the season that would have made him the league’s highest-paid kicker.
The current market has since been reset by Texans kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn at $6.5 million per season. If Aubrey signs his second-round tender, he will become the third-highest-paid kicker in the league behind Fairbairn and Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker.
2026 NFL Draft: Cowboys seeking ‘culture-changing’ first-rounders – Patrik Walker, DallasCowboys.com
For Brian Schottenheimer, it’s also important to keep building the right culture for his team.
The front office has made no bones whatsoever about the possibility of trading up (or maybe even down) in the first round, depending on how things are flowing in real-time in Pittsburgh — owner and general manager Jerry Jones himself stating the Cowboys are “absolutely” open to those possibilities.
And while they work to determine who deserves to get the call with their first-round picks, what’s crystal-clear is they better be able and ready to make an instant impact in Dallas, and that includes in the locker room.
If they’re not culture-changing players, they won’t get the call.
“Yeah, I think it all factors in, at the end of the day,” executive vice president and director of player personnel Stephen Jones told 105.3 FM the Fan. “Certainly, we’re trying to create an identity and a culture of being all for this football team.”
Jones rightfully wasn’t interested in sugarcoating the team’s defensive performance in 2025, in what amounted to the worst production in the history of the franchise on that side of the ball as Matt Eberflus struggled to get any buy-in or positive continuity of play from his players.
“We feel like we lacked that last year, on defense, in particular,” he explained. “We feel like we had an identity and culture that we needed and that the players were buying into, or playing with an edge. That’s the goal and, ultimately, the goal is to have a culture and an identity for the entire football team that Schotty is trying to develop in terms of the kind of men that we bring in here to compete day in, day out.
“And, when they’re working out, that they’re being a positive influence on what we’re ultimately trying to be as an organization and as a football team.”
Offense? Why you shouldn’t rule out Cowboys using a top draft pick on possible playmaker – Tim Cowlishaw, The Dallas Morning News
On a scale from one to furious, how mad would you be if the Cowboys selected an offensive player in the first round?
The football world has reached more than a consensus on this matter. An overwhelming collection of fans, media types, self-styled draft experts are moving in lockstep. On April 23 with the No. 12 and the No. 20 selections of the NFL draft, the Cowboys must acquire defensive help.
When a team gives up 500 points in a season, what else are you going to do?
It’s not the logic of this particular opinion that bothers me, it’s the unanimity. When a decision or a plan of attack is this obvious that there’s no room for discussion, then it feels like we are missing something. Things are never quite as simple as they seem. So if the Cowboys find a way to draft an offensive player with one of these two first-round picks, I will be the one who doesn’t gasp and shout, “How could they?”
It’s not likely to happen. They will probably find their way to take an edge rusher and a defensive back, squeeze in a linebacker in the third round. At least that’s one potential course. But there are some things to consider here regarding the alternative route.
In 2019, the Cowboys’ offense was better than last year’s. Dak Prescott had his career-high 4,902 passing yards. Ezekiel Elliott rushed for 1,357 yards. It was the last time he would compete for a rushing title and his last Pro Bowl, but there were no real signs of that. Amari Cooper and Michael Gallup both had more than 1,100 yards receiving. The Cowboys ranked No. 1 in offense, but still managed to get Jason Garrett fired with an 8-8 record.
The obvious draft needs were on defense. The Cowboys took CeeDee Lamb.
No one questioned that decision then or now, even though positive results were not immediate. The team fell to 6-10 in a strange COVID year, largely because Dak was injured for the first time as a pro and missed two-thirds of the season.
There are plenty of good wide receivers in this draft worthy of high picks. The Cowboys don’t need one, you say. That’s correct as long as the club doesn’t mess up negotiations with George Pickens and turn him into the unhappy camper he was in Pittsburgh, which is what got him to Dallas in the first place. It’s true as long as Lamb is healthy and not absent the five games he has missed the last two seasons.
Former Cowboys center John Fitzgerald passes away at 77 – DallasCowboys.com
R.I.P.
John Fitzgerald, the man in the middle of the Dallas Cowboys offensive line throughout most of the 1970s, passed away this morning. He was 77.
Selected by the Cowboys in the fourth round of the 1970 NFL Draft, Fitzgerald had played both offensive guard and defensive tackle during his three varsity seasons at Boston College, which earned him induction into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1982. He spent his rookie effort with Dallas on the taxi squad, where he was originally slotted in on the defensive side of the ball before finding a home with the offense.
A backup guard in the Cowboys’ Super Bowl campaign of 1971, Fitzgerald was then converted to center for the 1972 season and took over as the starter the next year. From 1973 to 1980, he would help pave the way for an offense that finished among the NFL’s top 10 for total yards in each of those eight seasons and ranked in the top three for five of those years.
Beginning in 1975, Fitzgerald was the foundation for head coach Tom Landry’s reintroduction of the famed shotgun offense, easily handling the transition of hiking the ball a farther distance to quarterback Roger Staubach. Thus would begin a stretch of three times in four seasons that the Cowboys would reach the Super Bowl, winning it all in 1977 with a 27-10 defeat of the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XII.
Daily Discussion Question: What is your least favorite first-round pick of the last decade?
