FRISCO, Texas _ Dallas Cowboys kicker Dan Bailey has never missed three kicks in a game.
Not in high school. Not ever.
At least not that he could remember.
Well, not until last Sunday's 30-10 victory against the New York Giants when the most accurate kicker in NFL history shockingly missed two field goals and an extra point for the first time in his career.
Bailey was admittedly "surprised like everyone else."
Bailey said the misses had nothing to do with the groin injury that kept him out four games before returning three weeks and were more about the unpredictable howling winds at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
"You know not only me but the training staff, if I'm not able to go out there and perform to my standards they're not going to put me out there and I'm not going to be out there," Bailey said. "If I'm on the field my expectation is to make every kick. That's always been that way. It's always going to be that way. As surprised as everybody else is, I guess I'm a little surprised as well but I'm just going to have to put this one behind me and move on."
Bailey has moved on, but he didn't go back and look at the kicks and he said he would do everything the same. He kicked well in pre-game warmups and had a read on the situation. The operation was right. He struck the ball right. The winds, however, didn't cooperate on the misses from 50 and 53 yards.
"You look for all that technical stuff obviously and then you try to take the emotion out of it because at the time you're disappointed in yourself," Bailey said. "But going back to the 53, I actually hit it pretty well and the 50 I thought was a pretty good hit too. It was just real gusty that way and we knew that going into it, so ... I don't know that I'd really do anything different. The PAT, I really don't know on that one. That's just a miss. I mean they're all misses obviously, but you try to go back and learn from it and see what you can do different and try not to do that again."
He is still scratching his head on the 53-yard attempt.
"Going that way we had a right to left wind so I played that and it tried to come back left but then it just kind of stayed out there," Bailey said. "If I had to hit that nine more times I'd probably hit the exact same ball and it would go in. Sometimes that happens. You do everything you think is right and sometimes it doesn't go in."
The Cowboys play at Oakland Sunday night.
