Ravens confident slumping Justin Tucker will overcome ‘technique issue’
Near the end of the Ravens' 28-25 win Sunday over the Dallas Cowboys , coach John Harbaugh found Justin Tucker along the sideline and embraced him . Locking eyes with his star kicker as the clock ticked down inside AT&T Stadium, Harbaugh talked with Tucker "about where we're at," he recalled Monday.
Where is Tucker, exactly, after another errant field goal, this time a 46-yarder? Hard to say. This is unchartered territory for the NFL's most accurate kicker ever. Tucker has missed a field goal attempt in three straight games for the first time in his decorated career. Overall, he's 5-for-8 this season; his 62.5% accuracy is the lowest of any kicker with more than five attempts this season, according to TruMedia.
Even more puzzling than Tucker's inconsistency is the consistency with which he's missed. His past four misses were all booted wide left, and the fifth hit the left upright. At his weekly Monday news conference, Harbaugh called it a "technique issue ... that he's working through."
"I think he's got a technique thing going on, and he'll work through it," Harbaugh said. "He knows exactly what it is, and just needs to smooth it back out, and I'm very confident that he will."
Tucker's miss Sunday was notable for its distance, or lack thereof. He entered Week 3 having made 36 of his past 38 field goals from 49 yards and under since the start of the 2023 season. After missing a 56-yarder in a Week 2 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, dropping him to 1-for-7 on 50-plus-yard attempts since 2023, Tucker bristled somewhat at the subject of his long-range kicking woes.
"As simply as I can put it, it's not my favorite topic of discussion, but I just missed the kick," he said. "I don't want to continue having this conversation. When I go out on the field, I'm confident that I'm going to nail every single kick, no matter where we are on the field."
Harbaugh, a former special teams coordinator who has worked with Tucker since he arrived in Baltimore as an undrafted free agent in 2013, called Tucker "everything that you want in a player and a friend" on Monday as he gave him another vote of confidence.
"Justin knows that we support him," Harbaugh said. "I've tried to make sure he knows that. That's part of it. Just relationship-wise, the talent and the ability, all that stuff is there. That hasn't gone anywhere. We see it all the time. But it's a technique thing. I think we approach it from a technical standpoint. [Senior special teams coach] Randy Brown does a great job coaching that part of it. Randy's the foremost guy in the business at that, so they work on that every single day.
"For me, I just try to encourage what I see and understand with the technique as well. But Justin's a pro. And I have great belief that he'll get the job done."
