

DALLAS — Brandon Aubrey was doing his normal prep work at The Star on Monday when his agent, Todd France, called with the good news. The Dallas Cowboys had agreed to terms to make Aubrey the highest-paid kicker in league history. Aubrey signed a contract extension that keeps him with the Cowboys through the 2030 season. There are four years of new money, $28 million, that kick in for the 2027 ...

Dallas Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey warms up before the start of the game against the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Amanda McCoy/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/TNS
DALLAS — Brandon Aubrey was doing his normal prep work at The Star on Monday when his agent, Todd France, called with the good news.
The Dallas Cowboys had agreed to terms to make Aubrey the highest-paid kicker in league history. Aubrey signed a contract extension that keeps him with the Cowboys through the 2030 season. There are four years of new money, $28 million, that kick in for the 2027 season, giving Aubrey the highest average salary, $7 million, for a kicker in league history.
"It hasn't sunk in just yet," Aubrey said in a conference call on Tuesday afternoon. "I do feel like a weight or stress deep down is gone. I'm able to enjoy day to day life a little bit more again. You don't want to be when you have such a big question hanging in the air it can kind of detract from your focus on just even hanging out with your son and your wife. I feel like that is gone and I'm a happier person again."
These contract talks were unnerving at times for Aubrey and his family.
Last offseason, France asked for a $10 million per year salary.
The revelation of a kicker asking for $10 million per season sent social media into a frenzy and prompted Aubrey and his wife, Jenn, to respond about contract talks.
"The process wasn't quite ready for it to go public. Obviously you're talking about very little details kinda leaking out," Aubrey said. "Not sure from where, but at that point, the noise got very loud for me and Jenn personally and we couldn't really open our phones without really being bombarded from one source to the other. It was just try to leave the pressure out there, made a couple of small comments, or [social media] post, let our side of the story have a little air and then accomplish what we were looking for."
Everything was calmer during the 2025 season after talks were tabled, and Aubrey had another solid season, earning his third Pro Bowl berth.
Once the season ended, Aubrey, with his wife expecting their second child and the need to get a bigger home, pushed France to make a deal. Aubrey also wanted the deal done before training camp. Of course, the Cowboys placed a second-round tender on Aubrey, keeping him under team control for at least one more season. Both sides had one goal in mind and that was to make Aubrey the highest-paid kicker in the league.
"We worked together to get to a middle ground that we could agree on," Aubrey said. "I kept getting consistent vocal force to my agent saying, 'Hey, this is what I want and the timing in which I would like for it to be done,' and to his credit he worked in that time frame and compromised to what he thought we should be getting and listened to my needs and my wants and put me at the top of the priority of the contract negotiations and got it done much, much faster than it would have been otherwise if I didn't take that stance."
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