Link: http://www.cowboysplus.com/topstorync/stories/011805cpcowlede.66b89.html

A year ago, Bill Parcells fired Steve Hoffman from his job as the Cowboys kicking coach. Hoffman was one of the last remaining links to the Jimmie Johnson era, having been hired by Johnson after he became the Cowboys' coach.
Throughout Hoffman's tenure, the Cowboys became known for developing high-performing kickers and punters from undrafted free agents. That led to them not being prepared to pay significant money for those positions, which was OK as long as the production-line continued to turn out good players. Along the way they developed players such as Chris Boniol, Micah Knorr, Toby Gowin, Richie Cunningham and Tim Seder.
This year the Cowboys' kicking game has been a mess. Billy Cundiff was cut after suffering a pre-season injury, leaving Jose Cortez as the kicker. After Cortez began missing "sitters", he was cut, and Shawn Suisham was brought back briefly before Cundiff was re-signed. After Cundiff also began missing easy field goals, he was cut, and Suisham was brought back for the end of the season...In short, this season has been a mess. 5 changes of kicker. I thought that the Jaguars had set some sort of record several seasons ago, when Tom Coughlin seemed to be acting like the proverbial corrupt monarch, signing a kicker only to say "Off with his head!" after 2 weeks. But the Cowboys have topped the Jaguars this year.
You will notice that two of the most stable and consistently competitive teams in the league (Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots) have a rather different model. They have kickers (Mike Vanderjagt, Adam Vinatieri) who make good money and are signed to long-term contracts. There is also a more significant underlying different. The coaches in question tend not to send out the kicking units when they could do better, and they also don't put their kickers at or beyond their range limits. Both teams are more inclined to go for it on fourth downs, rather than settling for a field goal or punting. As a result, when the coach of those teams sends out the field-goal unit on fourth down, they are pretty sure that 3 points will be the result.
As Gregg Easterbrook never tires of observing, punting or kicking a field goal is a safe, conservative action for a coach. You either give the opposition the ball and challenge your defense to stop them, or you collect 3 points.
I suspect that part of the appeal to coaches is that if the punt or field goal is muffed, you usually get to blame the poor guy who kicked the ball (this applies a lot of the time even if the snap is botched, giving the kicker or punter all sorts of adjustment problems). If an offense fails to convert on fourth down because of a broken play, accountability for that failure is harder to establish. Did the opponents come up with a great play? If not, whose fault was it? Somehow, I think that the lowly status of kickers and punters leads to them being more likely to carry the can than (say) the #1 wide receiver or franchise quarterback.
I thought that the Cowboys were taking the path of signing good players to long-term deals when they re-signed Toby Gowin a couple of seasons ago, giving him a multi-year contract and a decent signing bonus. However, they then dumped him after a season. He was handicapped during that season by a quad injury (a bad injury for any kicker), but quad injuries can be rehabbed, so I still have no idea why he was cut.
The Gowin incident showed me that the Cowboys have a blind spot in their appreciation of the kicking game. They either need to improve their kicking coaching and talent acquisition, or they need to be prepared to sign good kickers and punters to long-term deals and then not dump them after a single season. My guess is that a top-flight free-agent kicker or punter would not want to come and play for the Cowboys right now. They would stand a good chance of being cut at the first sign of perceived issues, being blamed for all of the problems of the known universe, and then replaced by an undrafted rookie.