A funny thing happened over these last couple years with the Ravens featuring the best offense in franchise history and a transcendent NFL MVP at quarterback.
They haven’t needed Justin Tucker as much.
That’s not to say the four-time Pro Bowl kicker has been any less brilliant, mind you. Tucker hit game-winning field goals against Pittsburgh and San Francisco in a franchise-record 14-2 season in 2019, and his last-minute 55-yarder won a Monday night classic in Cleveland last December. But it’s not a coincidence that Tucker has attempted and made the lowest number of field goals in his career over these last two seasons as the Ravens have averaged more than 31 points per game and become more aggressive on fourth downs. Remember we’re talking about someone twice voted team MVP, which is a tribute to his greatness and a reflection of such an underwhelming offense for so many years.
But Sunday reminded us how fortunate Baltimore remains to have him after the 10th-year kicker made an incredible 66-yard field goal to set a new NFL record and win a dramatic 19-17 final at Detroit. The historic kick saved the Ravens from an uneven performance on both sides of the ball and what would have been one of the most disappointing losses in recent memory a week after the dramatic home win over Kansas City.
An improbable 36-yard completion from Lamar Jackson to Sammy Watkins on fourth-and-19 — and perhaps a missed delay of game penalty — proved to be just enough for Tucker, whose record-setting boot bounced off the crossbar and through the uprights as time expired and the Ravens sideline erupted in euphoria.
“He’s the best kicker in history,” head coach John Harbaugh said. “When you have a kicker like that, you want to give him an opportunity like that. For him to come through like that is just historic. Someone came up to me on the sideline and said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before!’
“And it came to me right away, ‘Because nobody’s ever done anything like that before.'”
Describing it all as an “out-of-body experience” in his postgame press conference, Tucker said he’s always more nervous after making a game-winning kick as he reflects on the different ways the outcome could have gone the other way. Such an ability to be in the moment — and stay out of his own head — has kept him on a path to becoming a Hall of Famer and quite possibly the greatest kicker in NFL history.
He quipped after the game that he was thinking about getting a place in Detroit, the same city in which he made his previous career-long 61-yard field goal to beat the Lions on Monday Night Football eight years ago. Having come up short from 65 yards in both directions during Sunday’s pregame warmups at Ford Field, Tucker shifted to his kickoff technique — complete with a little crow hop — for the record-setting kick, something he says he began doing for extra long tries roughly a year ago.
“As I’m becoming more and more of a dinosaur in this league at 31 years old, I’ve got to do every little thing I can to get the ball to go just a little bit farther from here on out,” said Tucker, who also connected on field goals from 39, 50, and 32 yards. “When you’re that far away, there’s a level of having to abandon some of your technique that would help a ball go straight like I would have liked the 49-yarder earlier in the game to go.
“You abandon some of that, you sacrifice some of that to gain just a little power and use the adrenaline and the feeling of the moment to just get the ball to go.”
That unsuccessful 49-yard attempt in the first quarter — his first career miss in an indoor venue after being 21-for-21 — was just one of several missed opportunities for the Ravens on Sunday. The offense squandered golden scoring chances — including multiple drops from Marquise Brown that would have been touchdowns — and a defense that pitched a shutout in the first half wilted over the final two quarters to blow a 13-point lead. Week 3 followed the same script as the first two games of the season with a dramatic outcome that could have been flipped by a single play.
Yes, Baltimore easily could be 3-0 or 0-3, which is the beauty of the NFL and a sign that Harbaugh’s team continues to feel its way through the early portion of the schedule. A slew of injuries and, most recently, COVID-19-related absences have tested their resolve, but the Ravens are finding a way, whether it’s erasing a second-half deficit to finally beat their arch nemesis or barely avoiding a loss to one of the league’s bottom feeders.
The Ravens know they need to get better, but they’d much rather pursue that improvement after a win than a loss. The margin between the two was a favorable bounce off the crossbar against the winless Lions.
“We’re so much better than what we’ve played in my opinion so far,” defensive end Calais Campbell said. “But to be able to find a win in these moments, in these hard-fought games where we’re not playing our best ball, it’s special. That’s something that builds character [and] allows us to develop whatever this is for a chance to be there at the end.”
A chance was all Tucker needed to make NFL history and be the ultimate difference in a closer-than-expected game. The Ravens may not need him quite as much as they used to, but he sure saved them on Sunday.
