FRISCO, Texas — The Dallas Cowboys have released kicker Brett Maher, who leads the NFL with 10 missed field goal attempts this season, and signed veteran Kai Forbath.
Forbath, 32, was cut last week by the New England Patriots after he subbed for an injured Nick Folk and made one field goal attempt and 1-of-2 point-after tries in a loss to the Houston Texans. Forbath has made 85.8 percent of the kicks in a career (121 of 141) with five different teams.
Forbath was among three kickers the Cowboys worked out on Monday with Tristan Vizcaino and Nick Rose. Those two worked out for the Cowboys last week in addition to Austin MacGinnis but the Cowboys opted to stick with Maher.
In last Thursday’s loss to the Chicago Bears, Maher missed a 42-yard attempt in the second quarter that would have tied the score at 10.
It was the 10th miss of the season and the most in a season for a kicker in the last four seasons. Maher connected on just 1-of-5 attempts between 40-49 yards this season, which made him just one of three kickers in the last two years to connect on 20 percent or fewer of those kicks. David Akers went 1-of-6 in 2007 and Martin Gramatica went 1-of-5 in 2004.
For the season, Maher was 19-of-29 on field goals and became the only kicker in NFL history with three makes of at least 60 yards. He hit a 62-yarder last year against Philadelphia and attempts of 62 and 63 yards this season against the Eagles and New York Jets.
His big leg kept giving him multiple chances but he was unable to make the shorter kicks consistently enough this year after he made 29-of-36 tries last year, including 6-of-7 from 50 yards or more.
Forbath originally signed with the Cowboys as an undrafted free agent in 2011 but had a quadriceps injury that did not allow him to kick, and the team eventually went with another undrafted rookie, Dan Bailey as their kicker. Bailey went on to become one of the NFL’s most accurate kickers before his production fell off and led to his release in favor of Maher in 2018.