‘Ready for an opportunity’: UDFA Jonathan Garibay looks to convert clutch college kick to Cowboys starting job

It would be a cliché to suggest that one kick changed Jonathan Garibay’s life. The Texas Tech kicker was already a perfect 11-for-11 on the season when he lined up for a 62-yard try in the final seconds of a conference game, at home, with an interim coach, and with the Red Raiders’ bowl eligibility on the line.

A miss in that situation probably wouldn’t have been criticized too hard. No one in the entire FBS had connected from that far all season. No Big 12 kicker had converted a kick so long in over two decades. No Texas Tech kicker had ever made one from that distance.

But Garibay says he’d been waiting for just such a storybook scenario.

“Man, as a kicker, you always dream of moments like that, just having the opportunity to do it,” Garibay said last week, reflecting on that night. “I live by a saying: I’d rather be ready for an opportunity and not have it than have an opportunity and not be ready for it.”

Fast-forward six months, and he definitely has another opportunity in front of him.

With OTAs set to begin, the California-born youngster is suddenly the only kicker on the Cowboys roster. Despite going undrafted, Garibay has become the favorite to succeed All-Pro veteran and 2017 NFL scoring leader Greg Zuerlein in Dallas.

“It’s amazing, the opportunity that the Cowboys organization gave me,” he said. “I’m just trying to do the best with it and run.”

If history repeats itself even a little bit, Garibay will have opportunities aplenty. The 2021 Cowboys lost three regular season games by a field goal or less; Zuerlein had misses in each of them. A 15-2 record instead of 12-5 would have given Dallas the top NFC seed and a first-round bye in the postseason.

“The coaches expect a lot from me, [as do] the players. And I expect a lot from myself,” Garibay told reporters last week following a rookie minicamp session. “I just hope I can help this team accomplish some of its goals.”

Kind of like he did for the Red Raiders with a no-doubter that November night.

“When it came down to it, I was excited for the opportunity to kick that field goal, but at the same time, three seconds left, to qualify for a bowl game…” Garibay recalled, his voice trailing off as he set the scene. “I’m just glad I was able to help my team; everybody was working so hard to get that bowl game.”

Garibay was no stranger to clutch kicks, even prior to that. He had downed West Virginia a month earlier on a field goal with 18 seconds left. A buzzer-beater against Baylor had come the previous November.

So while his 62-yard bomb to beat Iowa State got him some extra attention (it was the longest successful attempt ever in the final minute of an FBS game), Garibay was already on the NFL radar. Pro Football Network had him ranked their No. 4 kicker entering the draft.

The Cowboys released Zuerlein back in March. And they already had Chris Naggar in the building when they elected to sign Garibay as an undrafted free agent. The team also invited ex-Northwest Missouri State star Simon Mathiesen to rookie minicamp, setting the stage for a healthy battle of the boots over the summer.

Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy even said as much following the first day of work, calling the kicker competition “wide open.”

Naggar was waived that same day. Mathiesen, who last kicked in a game in college in 2016, was always probably a long shot at best.

So while life can change quickly in the NFL and even faster for a rookie kicker who shanks one too many, the job appears to be Garibay’s to lose at this point.

He’s already wearing the No. 1 jersey… not that he’s letting that get in his head.

“It’s 99 percent mental,” Garibay explained before adding with a laugh, “And the other one percent is probably mental, too.”

But in even the most pressure-packed moment of his career thus far, he kept a level head.

“When you get to a distance that far, it’s really hard to give it that nice height,” Garibay said the night of his 62-yard game-winner. “You’ve kind of got to drive it. I looked at the flags at the top of the uprights and thought, ‘The wind’s not blowing. I don’t have to try to kill this ball. I’ve just got to hit a clean ball and hopefully it goes all the way.'”

That’s the mindset he’ll try to keep this summer as he attempts to win the Cowboys starting job, hoping to find himself in the exact same position as his predecessor: with a star on his helmet and a chance to take down the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on opening night of the season.

And while he won’t actually be thinking back to his 62-yard walkoff if it happens, he’ll be subconsciously trying to duplicate its results.

“Take it one kick at a time,” he explains, “because at the end of the day, that’s the mentality you’ve got to have: 1-for-1, all the time.”

So if it ends up leading to a long and successful career teeing them up and knocking them through for the Dallas Cowboys, maybe that one impossibly long kick on a fall night in Lubbock really will have changed Jonathan Garibay’s life after all.

List

Cowboys News: Deion responds to Saban, Eagles gaining ground, Aikman on Wentz's last chance

List

Way-too-early prediction of Cowboys' 2022 record, game by game