Brandon Aubrey, the undisputed best kicker in the NFL for the Dallas Cowboys, has some serious reservations about the 4-point field goal rule that the UFL floated this spring. This isn’t just a casual take, either, coming from a guy who’s basically a cheat code already for his team. His insights expose a wild potential shift in how football itself gets played if this rule ever hits the big time.
Stalling Drives For An Extra Point? Yeah, It’s Weird.
So what’s the big deal with this proposed rule? Any field goal from 60 yards or longer suddenly becomes worth four points instead of the usual three. On paper, that sounds amazing for kickers like Aubrey, guys with cannons for legs. More points, more glory, right? But Aubrey isn’t about that surface-level hype. He sees a massive problem lurking. He thinks it would totally mess with offensive strategy, making teams actually *want* to lose yardage in certain situations. “I think it’s a little weird,” Aubrey told ESPN, “Kind of incentivizes you to stall the drive in a certain spot. It makes you really, really question your playcalling around that 50-yard line area.” Imagine purposefully backing up for a shot at four points when you could be closer for three. That’s a huge shift in mindset!
A Playcaller’s Nightmare
Aubrey absolutely nails why this rule, while cool for kickers, is a nightmare for coaches and playcallers. He points out that it “perverses the incentives of football where the goal is to get it as close to the other person’s half as possible.” Instead of always trying to gain ground, you’d be crunching numbers at the 50-yard line, deciding if 58 yards is actually worse than 60 yards. “I like it for the kickers. I think it’s a nightmare for the playcallers,” Aubrey summed it up perfectly. It would be a total game changer for how deficits are approached, too. Picture a team down by three points suddenly having a chance to win the game with one monster kick, instead of just tying it up.
This whole idea is definitely cool on paper, and it would make those long kicks even more electric. But as Aubrey, the NFL’s top kicker, correctly points out, it also seriously challenges the core historical alignment of the game. It’s an interesting thought experiment, but maybe some traditions are just too important to mess with, even for an extra point.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
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