The Ravens can’t give up on Justin Tucker now

Maybe the Ravens should go to the nearest 7-Eleven and see if the store is offering a two-for-one sale on Kickers. It’s time for pure panic in this city.

Justin Tucker, perhaps the greatest kicker in NFL history, made two field goals on Sunday, but it was his two misses in the 24-19 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles that sent this city into a frenzy.

The Ravens trailed 14-12 at halftime, but had a chance to regain the lead with impressive drives of 55 and 57 yards to start the third quarter.

But Tucker’s 47-yard field goal attempt on the first possession sailed wide left, and the second, from 53 yards, drifted past the right edge. That’s pretty bad for a player who earned nicknames like “Mr. Automatic” and “Mr. Reliable” throughout his 13-year career.

Even worse, Tucker missed an extra point attempt after Lamar Jackson’s 14-yard touchdown pass by Mark Andrews that would have given the Ravens a 10-0 lead with 3:49 left in the first quarter.

Yikes. Black Friday became Blue Sunday.

After the game, Ravens coach John Harbaugh, a former special teams guru during his time as an assistant in Philadelphia, was asked about Tucker and he gave his best answer. It was the right answer.

A trip to 7-Eleven is not an option.

“We’ve been working on it,” Harbaugh said. “You work through it with each individual player. All you do is help the boys succeed. We do that. If you ask me, “Are we going to move on from Justin Tucker?” I don’t really plan on doing that right now; I don’t think that would be wise.

“But he’ll tell you, (and) he’ll be the first to tell you he has to do kicks because he can. I just think if you look at Justin Tucker’s story, you have to say he’s capable of it. This is something he wants to do and we will all want him to do it.”

Ravens vs. Eagles, December 1, 2024 | PHOTOS

You really didn’t expect anything else, did you? Kickers and punters are strange people. You can fly into space without a spaceship. Seriously. Your mind and psyche are fragile, and if you put them in the deep end, you may never get them back.

So Harbaugh plays it cool. There are plenty of kickers on the free agent market, but would you rather have a backup or a struggling Tucker?

Right now, the Ravens need to massage Tucker’s ego and make him feel great. Would you prefer Tucker or possibly another Billy Cundiff?

Take Tucker. He has the resume and the Ravens can’t afford to have a revolving door at this point. This kicking situation could get sloppy and out of control. It’s one thing when a team is rebuilding, but another when a team has high expectations for star players like Jackson, running back Derrick Henry and middle linebacker Roquan Smith.

You have to feed the monster and make Tucker as comfortable as possible. It’s one thing to sign one or more kickers to compete for the No. 1 pick in training camp — as former Ravens coach Brian Billick did with Matt Stover at the turn of the century — but another to add one so late Season.

Now is not the right time.

“As simply as I can put it, I missed the kicks and I’ll leave it at that,” Tucker said. “I just left the points out. I feel like I cost us this, but it doesn’t really benefit anyone to think about it. The only thing we can do – what I can do – is just keep working, keep moving forward and take it one step at a time. I hate that I had to have the same conversation over the course of this season, but that comes with the territory of this job description.

“The kicks are either good or not, and today I didn’t do a good enough job to help our team win the football game.”

There are several theories that explain Tucker’s recent failure. Before this season, there were already discussions about him being inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. But he has missed field goal attempts of 53, 56, 46, 50, 47, 50, 47 and 53 yards this season. He also missed two extra point attempts.

As ESPN’s Bill Barnwell noted, Tucker missed as many or more shots on Sunday than he missed in the entire 2012, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2019 or 2021 season.

One theory is that his leg is weaker, and that happens to everyone. One day you just wake up and it’s gone. It’s over, and perhaps that’s why most of his failed attempts went wide of the left goal because he hit the ball too hard.

Then there is another excuse. Kickers falter. This happens to the best of them. The only way out is to either get them advice or let them sort things out. At this point in the season, it’s best to leave Tucker alone.

“It’s just a matter of…I’ve said this before, every kick art lives in its own world,” Tucker said. “Whether it’s a PAT (point after touchdown) or a field goal from ‘this’ hash to ‘that’ direction or vice versa, each type of kick has to live on its own. And yes, I’ll leave it at that.”

There won’t be any major changes to the way he attacks the ball.

“I didn’t really try to compensate for other kicks that had eluded me before, because like I said, each kick is on its own, it lives in its own world and is its own challenge,” Tucker said. “So the fact that multiple kicks went left had nothing to do with why I pushed the 53-yarder to the right. It was just that I didn’t hit the ball on the target line on that shot – or not exactly on the target line that I wanted.”

So nothing will change at this point, nor should it. Harbaugh knows he has to get through this, much like Billick did with Stover in 2000. Remember, the Ravens went five games without a touchdown, but Stover became the second most important player on offense this season next to running back Jamal Lewis.