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Cowboys counting on Buehler

A year ago at this time, the Dallas Cowboys thought they had their kicker of the future.In his first NFL season, Nick Folk made the Pro Bowl as a rookie, the first time a Cowboy had done that since Emmitt Smith.

A year ago at this time, the Dallas Cowboys thought they had their kicker of the future.

In his first NFL season, Nick Folk made the Pro Bowl as a rookie, the first time a Cowboy had done that since Emmitt Smith.

The following year Folk was true on 90.9 percent of his field-goal attempts.

The kicking position had been a revolving door at Valley Ranch since Jerry Jones put his name on the door in 1989.

Folk was Jones’ 16th kicker in 19 years.

The Cowboys won Super Bowls in 1992, 1993 and 1995 with three different kickers.

With Folk, it looked like the team finally had stability at that position.

Then, poof, he was gone.

Quicker than you could say “wide right,” the Cowboys were once again shopping for a new leg.

Folk misfired on seven field goals between the 40 and 49-yard lines last season.

After missing a late 24-yard chip shot that nearly cost Dallas a win over the Saints, the kicker of the future became the kicker of the past.

It was four days before Christmas, and Nick Folk was out of work.

The desperate Cowboys replaced him with Shaun Suisham, who had been booted off the roster of the 4-12 Washington Redskins.

“Nick is a great kicker, but sometimes stuff happens,” said David Buehler, a strong-legged, athletic kicker that the Cowboys drafted last year just to handle kickoff duties. “Golfers got through slumps. Look at Tiger right now. He is the best player in the world just going through a slump. Sometimes you have a mental letdown, and it is hard to come back from it.”

The Cowboys decided not to shop for a new kicker in the offseason.

Buehler impressed everyone as a kickoff specialist last year.

He also impressed the Raiders last week, booming four in the paint and not allowing any kickoff returns.

Now he hopes to impress them as a field goal kicker.

He has been accurate on 6-of-7 field-goal attempts and scored all of the offensive points in the Cowboys’ first two preseason games.

But the one miss has stood out much more than the six makes.

Buehler hooked that 49-yard try so badly against the Bengals that one writer for the Minnesota-Star Tribune called it “wide left of Nancy Pelosi.”

It was ugleeeeee.

So ugly in fact that Minnesota veteran kicker Ryan Longwell stated ragging on the Cowboys kicker.

“He’s got a huge kickoff leg, but he missed that field goal by 20 yards,” Longwell told the Star Tribune.

“I’m not sure if you can be there if you’re hitting balls like that.

“In building a team, I think kicker would rank pretty high. It is one of the few positions in the world that’s either an A or an F. There are no C’s in kicking. Your successful teams always have the consistent kickers. And the teams that are always a near miss are always teams that think they can sneak one by with a kicker who doesn’t have the experience.”

Jimmy Johnson won his first Super Bowl with Lin Ellliot but dumped him early the following year and won another one with veteran Eddie Murray.

Two years after that, Chris Boniol made 27 of 28 field goals, and Dallas won another Lombardi Trophy.

So the Cowboys probably know more about winning kickers than the ring-less Longwell.

Buehler, who kicked for USC before being Dallas’ fifth-round draft pick in 2009, admits that 49-yard try two weeks ago was ugly, but he also knows how to fix it.

The Cowboys hired Boniol to work with Buehler, and the two studied the kick to see what went wrong.

“I was kind of quick and anxious with that 49-yarder. I approached it like it was a 60-yarder and tried to crush it,” Buehler explained.

“I don’t need to do that with a 49-yarder. I just have to trust my leg and put it through the uprights.”

He said he is working hard this summer so that others on the team will also trust that leg.

Late in the game against the Raiders last week, Buehler said he was hoping that the fourth-string quarterback could get the Cowboys in a position to give him a shot at kicking a 50-yard winner.

“I want to show these coaches, the owner and my teammates what I can do — that when the game is on the line, I can come through in the clutch,” he said.

It would be even nicer if Longwell is watching, too.