The Ravens have released All-Pro kicker Justin Tucker, ending a record-setting tenure with the team that became undone in the past five months amid allegations of sexual misconduct levied at Tucker by more than a dozen Baltimore-area massage therapists.
In a statement May 5 announcing the move, general manager Eric DeCosta said, “Sometimes football decisions are incredibly difficult, and this is one of those instances.”
“Justin created many significant and unforgettable moments in Ravens history,” DeCosta continued. “His reliability, focus, drive, resilience and extraordinary talent made him one of the league’s best kickers for over a decade. We are grateful for Justin’s many contributions while playing for the Ravens. We sincerely wish him and his family the very best in this next chapter of their lives.”
The NFL has been conducting an investigation into the allegations against Tucker — first reported in a series of stories in The Baltimore Banner — and throughout the past couple of months, the Ravens when asked about Tucker’s status have deferred to the NFL’s investigation.
But last month, the Ravens drafted kicker Tyler Loop from Arizona — the first time in franchise history that the team drafted a kicker — and it became increasingly clear that the team was preparing sooner than anyone would have expected for life after Tucker.
Loop was at the Ravens facility this week for the team’s rookie minicamp, and head coach John Harbaugh noted that Tucker had also been in the facility the past couple of weeks as veterans took part in the first phase of its voluntary offseason program.
Asked about the potential competition between Tucker and Loop, Harbaugh had said, “Every decision we make has to be based on football. There’s a lot of layers to that. … Whatever we decide to do over the next few weeks would be based on football.”
But it seems implausible that Loop — kicking without the Ravens’ regular long snapper or holder — showed so much in a couple of days of a rookie minicamp that the team definitively concluded he was a better option than their record-setting, All-Pro, 13-year veteran.
Any suspension handed down by the league would have taken effect in the regular season, meaning Tucker would have been eligible to take part throughout training camp, though Loop — or someone else — would have been slated to be the Week 1 kicker in such a scenario anyway. And the presence of Tucker could have been viewed as not only a major distraction for Loop, but also for the entire team, as national media rolling through Owings Mills during training camp were likely to make Tucker a lead story one day after another.
Finances also could have played a part; Tucker was in the middle of a four-year, $24 million contract extension signed in 2022. According to The Athletic, the Ravens will deem Tucker as a post-June 1 cut, which will free up $4.2 million in cap space this year. The team will be on the hook for roughly $4.6 million in dead money on Tucker’s contract in 2026.
Given all those factors, the team decided not to wait for the NFL investigation to conclude.
All-time great
Tucker, 35, was the longest-tenured Raven and the last active player from their 2012 Super Bowl team.
Like Loop, Tucker joined the Ravens as a rookie. Though unlike Loop, Tucker was never drafted; the team signed him in 2012 as an undrafted rookie out of Texas at the urging of former special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg after Tucker impressed during a tryout at the team’s rookie minicamp.
Tucker supplanted embattled Billy Cundiff — some questioned at the time entrusting the kicking game of a Super Bowl contender to a rookie — and Tucker quickly squashed any concerns. In Week 3 of his rookie season, Tucker hit the first of his 20 career game-winners, and he added two more that season, including a 47-yarder in the second overtime period to beat Denver in the divisional round game known as the “Mile High Miracle.”
Another of those game-winners was a 66-yard field goal off the crossbar to beat Detroit — the longest field goal in NFL history.
Always confident and with a touch of swagger about him, Tucker backed it up with some of the most clutch kicking in NFL history. Tucker made 65 straight field-goal attempts in the fourth quarter or overtime — the longest such streak in NFL history — before the streak was snapped when he missed what would have been an NFL-record 67-yarder at Jacksonville in 2022.
Tucker has made 89.1 percent of his field-goal attempts in his career (417-for-468), the best rate in NFL history, despite kicking his entire career in the AFC North. The four teams in the division all play in outdoor stadiums where nasty weather, questionable turf and mean crosswinds are not uncommon.
An eight-time All-Pro, Tucker holds nearly every significant Ravens kicking record. But he endured the worst season of his career in 2024, and even before the allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced, questions had started to percolate about his future with the team.
Tucker made 22 of 30 field goals this past season for a career-low success rate of 73.3 percent. He suffered through a midseason slump that was the worst of his career, with five missed field-goal attempts and two missed extra-point kicks in a six-game span. Against Philadelphia in December, he missed three kicks in a game (two field-goal attempts, one extra point) for the first time in his career.
Tucker attributed the slump to correctable mechanics, and he rebounded to go 5-for-5 on field goals and 23-for-23 on extra points over the final six games, including playoffs.
After the season — and before any allegations surfaced in the Banner — DeCosta had been asked about Tucker’s future with the team and said, “I have every expectation that Justin’s going to be a great kicker for us next year and moving forward. … [He] had a little bit of adversity midway through the season, but I think Justin is a tremendous competitor, [and] very, very talented. He works his butt off, and I would expect him to be the kicker for us next year.”
Yet DeCosta drafted a kicker for the first time in franchise history, which seemed to be a signal. That’s not to say the job will be handed to Loop; at no other position on the team would a sixth-round rookie draft pick be handed a starting job. Expect the Ravens to bring in at least one other kicker to compete with Loop for the job. John Hoyland, who had kicked collegiately at Wyoming, was at the Ravens’ rookie minicamp on a tryout basis. A veteran could be added to the mix as well.
But Tucker, in a scenario that would have been inconceivable 12 months ago, is out of the picture.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox