It is particularly heartbreaking when the decline is one in every of each the thoughts and the physique. We can settle for the best of all time slowing down, failing to push a pile or lacking a deal with. Less simple is watching Justin Tucker stare down a area aim perpetually hooking outdoors of its supposed parameters; a painter who can not really feel the canvas or a golfer who now preempts all his pictures with a warning to bystanders. Name your illness: yips, shakes, hiccups … it’s an terrible curse and one which deserves nothing however the deepest of sympathy.
Tucker is the best kicker in NFL historical past. He got here into this season as probably the most correct and embellished of all time, and nonetheless holds the document for the longest kick made in an NFL sport. This 12 months, he has a career-low 73.9% area aim charge, which is able to nearly assuredly snap his stretch of 5 consecutive Pro Bowl nods. He has been requested to elucidate in each approach how he went from the image of machine-like accuracy to a participant who, just some months in the past, I noticed speaking to Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh after the sport and being instructed: “Just be completely happy we received.” Another sport by which his efficiency lingered like crime scene fingerprints.
Indeed, Baltimore has been profitable despite Tucker and on Sunday he missed two extra area objectives and an additional level—extra misses than he has had in whole seasons in earlier years. In 2024, he missed a area aim in every of the primary three video games to begin the season, and has now missed a minimum of one kick in 4 of his previous six video games. The Ravens are the one crew within the NFL with a former particular groups coordinator as a head coach, and one of many few with a kicking-specific coach on the employees who can handle particular considerations extra precisely than many coordinators (none of whom are kickers). Each week he’s buried in a sea of microphones speaking about goal factors and launch angles, as if anybody in his orbit may perceive how nicely he’d achieved his job for therefore lengthy and the way irritating it’s that he can—for now—not do it.
But even Harbaugh has to know that Sunday’s 24–19 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles was a breaking level. He is a coach who’s splendidly attuned to the psychological sport and is managing a fancy employees filled with vastly completely different personalities. Having been within the NFL for therefore lengthy, there’s a certainty he can discover a solution to unceremoniously set Tucker apart for a bit off the energetic roster whereas he harnesses his craft in non-public.
Maybe privateness is what’s crucial proper now in lieu of a conveyor belt of fears that, regardless of how onerous Tucker tries to compartmentalize, are clearly surfacing every time he approaches the ball to try a kick.
The points, after all, are multifaceted. Harbaugh has to resolve between the heartbreak and absolutely the hysteria {that a} kicker tryout would trigger in Baltimore and … inaction. The Ravens don’t at the moment have a kicker on their apply squad, however one would assume even that transaction would result in onerous questions he should reply in public. Harbaugh must both gamble that Tucker will determine it out or gamble that somebody who is on the market on the road proper now may are available and digest the enormity of changing a well-loved crew pillar who might not need the break that Harbaugh is providing. He must assume that his crew—which is 8–5 and in addition carrying the load of final season’s residence loss within the AFC title sport—wouldn’t fall below the wave of cynicism understanding that making it into opposing territory affords about the identical likelihood of logging factors as spinning a roulette wheel.
For a coach so in a position to win within the margins, his therapy of Tucker has been a lesson in humanity not like so many unceremonious dumpings which have taken place across the league. Unfortunately, Harbaugh has delayed the method lengthy sufficient.
We are sometimes not aware about solutions for our most blatant questions. Last 12 months, we questioned perpetually why the Kansas City Chiefs wouldn’t signal one other extensive receiver when all Patrick Mahomes’s high weapons appeared to do was drop the ball or line up offside. Perhaps Harbaugh’s calculations so far have been comparatively easy primarily based on his personal information of the locker room and his innate perception in Tucker.
But the parameters have modified now that we are able to envision the tangible impact—the literal distinction between Baltimore and the NFL’s different finest groups. Dealing with heartbreak is rarely simple, however permitting Tucker to proceed on this manner could have much more disastrous penalties.
