Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy insists that the team plans to “forge ahead” with kicker Brett Maher. McCarthy’s boss may have other plans in mind.
Via Jon Machota of TheAthletic.com, Cowboys owner and G.M. Jerry Jones said Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan that the team would “take a look” at the kicking situation, and that the Cowboys possibly would go for two more often after touchdowns.
“It would be really a big setback to go into the rest of this tournament, rest of this playoff, with shakiness at kicker,” Jones said.
So how will the Cowboys eliminate the shakiness? They can’t pretend it didn’t happen, that Maher didn’t miss four extra points on Monday night. And they can’t ignore the chants and taunts that 49ers fans, sensing blood in the water, will direct at Maher on Sunday.
All week long, Maher should be kicking and kicking and kicking with deafening sound surrounding him. Heck, have him wear headphones with the volume turned all the way up containing nothing but his last name being chanted, over and over and over again.
So they have their work cut out for them. Maher eventually has to be trusted to make kicks. How can they trust him to make kicks until he can trust himself?
It really would be something if the team’s latest shot at qualifying for the NFC Championship for the first time since 1995 ends up imploding because the kicker developed an obvious case of the yips — and because the team failed to do enough to fix it.