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% of his kicks (121 of 141) in a career with five teams.
"I definitely feel more comfortable coming in here after getting that one game in," Forbath said. "Just scoring points. That's what I've done for seven years now so I'm just here to be consistent and make kicks when they need me to."
Forbath was among three kickers the Cowboys worked out on Monday, with the other two being Tristan Vizcaino and Nick Rose. Those two also worked out for the Cowboys last week, in addition to Austin MacGinnis, but the Cowboys opted to stick with Maher then.
"It's not the best situation," Forbath said, "but if you make kicks, you stay around. I guess that's the name of the game and that's what I'm here to do."
In 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 his 10th miss of the season and the most in a season for a kicker in the past four seasons. Maher connected on just 1 of 5 attempts of 40-49 yards this season, which made him one of three kickers in the past 20 years to connect on 20% or worse 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 its kicker. Bailey went on to become one of the NFL's most accurate kickers before his production fell off, which led to his release in favor of Maher in 2018.