When the Ravens cut kicker Justin Tucker earlier this month, they were careful to call it a “football decision.” In his first public comments since the move was made, coach John Harbaugh made it clear that the “football decision” was not an easy one.
“I mean, you’re talking about arguably the best kicker in the history of the game,” Harbaugh told reporters, via Jamison Hensley of ESPN.com. “And like we said, it’s multi-layered [and] it’s complicated. But in the end, it all comes back to what you have to do to get ready for your team to play the first game. And I think if you step back and you take a look at all the issues and all the ramifications, you can understand that we’ve got to get our football team ready and we’ve got to have a kicker to go. And that was the move that we decided to make. . . .
“So in that sense, it’s a football decision and now we have to spend all of our focus and our time to get these kickers ready. We’ve got a competition going on and [we’ve got to] get these guys ready to make kicks. So that’s all I’m thinking about. From my perspective, it’s like, ‘We have to have a kicker out there making kicks,’ and what’s the best way to get that done?”
Harbaugh was pressed on how the Ravens could make a football decision to cut Tucker when they didn’t see him kick since the end of the 2024 postseason.
“Like I just said, it’s a multilayer decision,” Harbaugh said. “If it was just a black and white simple thing, then it would be easy to understand, but I think anybody can look at the whole thing in perspective and say, ‘OK, we’ve got to have a kicker ready to go,’ and there’s a whole lot of moving parts of that deal. It is just the reality of it.”
The Ravens have emphasized that it’s a football decision because if it was regarded as punishment for Tucker being on the wrong end of multiple allegations of misconduct during massage-therapy sessions, there could be repercussions. For example, if the move could be characterized as punitive, Tucker could argue that the league cannot continue to investigate him, citing the “one punishment” rule.
The truth is that the Ravens had to consider all factors. Most teams don’t tolerate distractions from specialists. The fact that Tucker had a potential suspension hovering over him made it important that they focused on having someone other than Tucker ready for Week 1. With Tucker not kicking as well as he once did, it became easier for the Ravens to cut the cord and roll the dice on a new kicker.
However, they’re now going to put their full complement of kicking eggs in one basket. And it will either be sixth-round rookie Tyler Loop or undrafted rookie John Hoyland. How does Harbaugh feel about assuming that risk?
“There’s a lot of risks in life,” Harbaugh said. “There’s a risk [when] you get in your car; you’ll be driving home in this rain. I want you to be very careful. It’s going to be risky out there on that road.”
The difference is that the consequences of a car accident could be irreversible. Because kickers are largely fungible, the Ravens can easily make a change — if Loop or Hoyland or someone else can’t do the job.
