One of the greatest football coaches of all-time believes he knows what’s off with one of the greatest kickers ever.
Justin Tucker has had an astonishing fall-off this year and cost the Ravens on multiple occasions, including in a loss to the Eagles this past Sunday in which he missed two field goals and an extra point.
Bill Belichick addressed Tucker’s kicking struggles on his SiriusXM show, “Let’s Go!” and painted the problems as fixable.
“Obviously there’s something that’s a little bit off from a technique standpoint,” Belichick said.
“But I don’t see that there’s like a lack of talent. I think there’s something mechanically that he’s not doing consistently. If you have the key to unlock that problem, then probably everything could be great.”
Nevertheless, Belichick acknowledged that Tucker’s kicking woes didn’t just spring up this season.
“But clearly this extends back even to last year a little bit, too, because there was some accuracy issues last year in the ‘23 season as well as the current season,” he continued.
“So I think Coach [John] Harbaugh is doing the right thing. I would stick with Justin Tucker. This guy was the most accurate kicker in the history of football. He gets great height on the ball. He’s been super consistent. He’s obviously having a little bit of a rough patch right here but it doesn’t look to me like his talent level has declined. There’s something mechanically that just isn’t quite right all the time. I think they just gotta work hard and try to find that.”
Tucker is 19-for-27 on field goals and 42-for-44 on extra points.
A stat went viral this week that the Ravens have five losses by a combined 22 points — and Tucker missed exactly 22 points worth of kicks in those games.
Still, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh did not sound like he was thinking about switching kickers after the loss to the Eagles.
“We’ve been working through it. We work through it with every single player. Every single thing you fight to try and help guys be successful, so we’ll do that. If you ask me if we’re gonna move on from Justin Tucker, I’m not really plan on doing that right now. I don’t think that’d be wise,” Harbaugh said.
“He’ll be the first to tell you he needs to make as many kicks as he can. I just think if you look at Justin Tucker’s history, you’d have to say he’s capable of doing that.”