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OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Speaking for the first time since the release of Justin Tucker, Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh acknowledged Wednesday that it was a “complex decision-making process” that included himself, owner Steve Bisciotti, team president Sashi Brown and general manager Eric DeCosta.
Tucker, the NFL’s most accurate kicker, was released by the Ravens on May 5 amid an NFL investigation for sexual misconduct.
“I mean, you’re talking about arguably the best kicker in the history of the game,” Harbaugh said after the team’s second OTA practice of the offseason. “And like we said, it’s multi-layered [and] it’s complicated. But in the end, it all comes back to what you have to do to get ready for your team to play the first game. And I think if you step back and you take a look at all the issues and all the ramifications, you can understand that we’ve got to get our football team ready and we’ve got to have a kicker to go. And that was the move that we decided to make.”
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Harbaugh added, “So in that sense, it’s a football decision and now we have to spend all of our focus and our time to get these kickers ready. We’ve got a competition going on and [we’ve got to] get these guys ready to make kicks. So that’s all I’m thinking about. From my perspective, it’s like, ‘We have to have a kicker out there making kicks,’ and what’s the best way to get that done?”
Tucker, 35, has been accused of misconduct by 16 massage therapists from eight high-end spas and wellness centers in the Baltimore area, according to the Baltimore Banner. All of the alleged misconduct reportedly occurred between 2012 and 2016, Tucker’s first five seasons in the NFL.
Tucker has twice publicly denied any wrongdoing. He has called the allegations “unequivocally false” and described the Banner’s article as “desperate tabloid fodder.”
Ravens officials previously said they would wait for the NFL’s investigation to conclude before making a decision on Tucker. But Baltimore pivoted and cut Tucker nine days after the team made the historic move of selecting Tyler Loop in the sixth round of the NFL draft. That marked the first time in the franchise’s 30 years that it drafted a kicker.
In releasing Tucker earlier this month, Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta said in a statement that it was a “football decision.”
Asked how this could be labeled a football decision if Tucker hadn’t kicked since January, Harbaugh said, “Like I just said, it’s a multilayer decision. If it was just a black and white simple thing, then it would be easy to understand, but I think anybody can look at the whole thing in perspective and say, ‘OK, we’ve got to have a kicker ready to go,’ and there’s a whole lot of moving parts of that deal. It is just the reality of it.”
A seven-time Pro Bowl player, Tucker is coming off the worst season of his 13-year NFL career. He missed 10 total kicks, three more than in any previous season. His 73.3% conversion rate (22-of-30) on field goals last season ranked 31st in the NFL.
In replacing Tucker, Baltimore is holding a competition between Loop and John Hoyland, an undrafted rookie kicker from Wyoming. The last time the Ravens went with a rookie kicker was with Tucker in 2012, when Baltimore won the Super Bowl.
Harbaugh was asked about the level of risk involved for a championship-caliber team to rely on a rookie kicker.
“There’s a lot of risks in life,” Harbaugh said. “There’s a risk [when] you get in your car; you’ll be driving home in this rain. I want you to be very careful. It’s going to be risky out there on that road.”
