PHILADELPHIA — Brendan Burke returned home on a Sunday last fall from coaching soccer, put an NFL game on his TV, and could not believe what he saw.

“I was like ‘That can’t be the same guy,’ ” Burke said. “ ‘Oh my God, that’s the same guy.’ ”

The guy was Brandon Aubrey, whom Burke coached years earlier with the Philadelphia Union’s second-division soccer team that played home games in front of a few hundred people and sometimes rode buses 12 hours to away games.

Aubrey, once an MLS first-round pick, was vying for a spot on the Union in 2018 but decided to retire after the team released him. And now he was kicking field goals on Burke’s TV for the Dallas Cowboys.

Aubrey, a Pro Bowler last season as a 28-year-old rookie, is one of the NFL’s best kickers. He has made nine of his 10 kicks this season from 50 yards or longer, and his 65-yarder in Week 3 is a yard shy of the NFL record. Aubrey has converted 93.3% of his field goals in the last two seasons, fourth-best among all kickers.

Not bad for a guy who learned how to kick footballs only after the Union turned him away.

“Don’t be afraid to take chances on yourself,” said Aubrey, who will kick Sunday against the Eagles. “It was pretty apparent to me that I had the raw talent. I just had to hone it in and refine it. I knew eventually that it would take as long as I got the opportunity.”

Aubrey could have kept his soccer dream churning after the Union released him, but it no longer made financial sense. He made $35,000 in 2018 to play for Bethlehem Steel, then the Union’s affiliate in the United Soccer League. He shared an apartment with teammates in King of Prussia, rode shuttles to practice and games, and no longer felt like the guy who left Notre Dame as a top prospect when Toronto drafted him 21st overall in 2017.

“I had already embarrassed myself in the MLS,” said Aubrey, who was released by Toronto without playing in a game. “The way that flamed out pretty quickly was a shot to the pride. The whole time I was in Bethlehem, I thought ‘Why am I not in the MLS?’ I thought about that a lot.”

Aubrey played well for the Steel, who played in a nearly empty 16,000-seat football stadium at Lehigh University. He lost his starting job late in the season after being slowed by injuries, and the team lost in the playoffs to the eventual champion. The squad was filled with guys who would climb the soccer ladder, like South Jersey’s Brenden Aaronson, who played for the United States in the 2022 World Cup, and John McCarthy, the goalie from Mayfair who was the MVP of the 2022 MLS Cup.

“We had a shared goal,” Aubrey said. “All of us wanted to play at the next level.”

The Steel dissolved after the season, the Union terminated Aubrey’s contract, and he headed home to Texas. Aubrey passed on other USL offers, deciding that it was time to use his computer science degree and earn more money than he did playing soccer.

“I didn’t really know if I really had the desire to chase it anymore with the likely possibility that I would never make it up to the MLS,” Aubrey said. “And even if I made it to the MLS, I would’ve made less as a minimum-salary player there than I would’ve as a first-year software engineer.”

Three months after his final soccer game, Aubrey was searching for software-engineer jobs and watching football with his wife. Aubrey was a huge fan, watched NFL RedZone every Sunday, and played fantasy football with his old soccer teammates. They saw a kicker miss a field goal, and his wife, Jenn, told Aubrey that he could do that.

“I didn’t believe her at first,” Aubrey said. “But I went with it.”

He bought a football and a kicking tee the next day at a secondhand sporting goods store, went to a local field, and tried to see whether field goals were as easy as they seemed from the couch. He drilled them, booming it through the uprights from 60 yards out.

His wife was right.

“I had no form and I was taking a long approach, but the theory was there,” Aubrey said. “It was like, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ It gave me something to focus on and to grind towards and replace the itch that soccer had.”

Aubrey searched on the internet for a coach and found a local kicking guru who was offering a clinic nearby. The former professional soccer player was joined there by kids.

“I showed up not really thinking about what the market would be for kicking lessons,” Aubrey said. “Then it was middle school and high schoolers and a couple of kids who were committed to [Division I] schools. It was a good batch of kids but still kids. I was like, ‘I have nothing to lose.’ ”

He kicked with the kids and then asked the instructor whether he thought he had a shot. Brian Egan, who kicked in college, told Aubrey that his leg could do it. He trained for nearly two years with Egan, meeting him in the afternoon after Aubrey left his cubicle at GM Financial in Arlington, Texas. The company let Aubrey — who still has a LinkedIn profile — start his shift early so he could practice his kicking before sunset.

Egan eventually told Aubrey that there was nothing more to learn. It was time for him to try and catch the attention of an NFL team. He traveled to various kicking combines — “Every vacation my wife and I took had to do with kicking,” Aubrey said — and kept coming up empty.

Scouts loved his leg, but his story was far-fetched. An NFL team didn’t feel comfortable just handing a job to a guy who never kicked in a game before and was working a 9 to 5. It wasn’t a Tony Danza movie.

“They said they wouldn’t give me an opportunity because ‘You don’t have game film, so we don’t know if you can do it in a game,’ ” Aubrey said. “That was that.”

Aubrey finally got his break when the USFL returned in 2022. The United States Football League’s kicking tryout was organized by longtime NFL kicker John Carney, who kicked at Notre Dame and had become a connection for Aubrey.

Aubrey crushed the combine and signed a contract with the league. But the teams were unsure. They had former NFL kickers to choose from. Who is this soccer guy? Carney told Skip Holtz, his old Notre Dame teammate and coach of the Birmingham Stallions, to give Aubrey a chance. Holtz drafted him.

“That’s all I needed,” Aubrey said. “It took about 3 1/3 years. If the USFL never popped up, this probably would’ve never happened.”

He told his bosses at GM Financial that he was leaving. They were thrilled. The guy in the cubicle was getting the chance to kick.

“They gave me a nice little going-away party and wished me luck,” Aubrey said.

Aubrey played two seasons in the USFL and helped Birmingham win back-to-back championships. He signed with the Cowboys in July 2023, joining the team that plays home games just a short drive from his old office at GM Financial.

He wasn’t guaranteed anything but a chance in training camp. And that’s all he needed. He won the job, becoming an NFL kicker five years after his soccer dream ended in Philadelphia. He was soon on TV kicking field goals in front of 93,000 fans. To his old coach’s surprise, it was the same guy.

“I almost fell out of my chair,” Burke said. “I hadn’t talked to him since he left Bethlehem. I had no idea.”

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