Time For The Ravens to Get a Leg Up!

Let’s get something straight right out of the gate: this isn’t a hit piece on Tyler Loop.

Loop had a solid rookie year. He connected on 30 of 34 field goals — an 88.2% clip that ranked fourth among rookie kickers over the past five seasons, per ESPN. He was 44 of 46 on extra points. Before that fateful Sunday night in Pittsburgh, he was a perfect 29-for-29 from inside 50 yards. Those numbers tell a story of a guy who can kick in this league.

But we all know how the story ended. Wide right from 44. Season over. 8-9. The Steelers dancing on the AFC North. As that fateful kick drifted astray, the scar tissue that fans deal with courtesy of Billy Cundiff, received a companion – a fresh wound to the collection.

So here we are in August of 2026, and Loop is the only kicker in Owings Mills. No veteran leg. No camp battle. Nothing. Head Coach Jesse Minter told reporters back at the league meetings, “Truthfully, we’ll see how it goes,” and hinted that the team could certainly add another guy for camp.

But the front office added nobody. And when Loop opened the preseason by pushing a 49-yarder — the same distance-and-beyond range where he went 1-for-4 as a rookie — the silence from The Castle grew a bit louder. And therein lies the rub.

The Ravens, of all franchises, should know better. This organization spent two decades building the most productive kicking pipeline in football. They brought legs into camp when they had Matt Stover. They brought legs into camp when they had Justin Tucker — Justin Tucker — and those camp legs went on to make Pro Bowls, win championships, and in one glorious case, net the club a draft pick. Need proof? Let’s consider the history.

Robbie Gould, 2005

Fresh off getting cut by the Patriots at the end of August 2005, Gould landed on the Ravens’ practice squad on September 7 while Stover — one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history — handled the real work. Per Pro Football Reference, Baltimore released Gould three weeks later, on September 27. He signed with the Bears shortly thereafter and, well, you know the rest. A Pro Bowl in 2006. Eighteen NFL seasons. 266 career games between Chicago and San Francisco, retiring after 2022 as one of the most accurate kickers the game has ever seen.

The point isn’t that the Ravens should’ve kept him over Stover — nobody was cutting Matt Stover in 2005. The point is the Ravens weren’t afraid to have a real NFL leg in the building.

Graham Gano, 2009

When Stover finally moved on, the Ravens didn’t just hand the job to Steven Hauschka. They signed Gano — widely regarded as the top kicking prospect in that draft class — as an undrafted free agent out of Florida State and made him earn it or lose it at Westminster. Jerry Rosburg said at the end of that camp that the Ravens had two NFL kickers. He was right. Hauschka won the job, and Gano went on a journey — a UFL championship in Las Vegas, then Washington, then Carolina, where he drilled a franchise-record 63-yarder in 2018, and later the Giants. The man kicked in this league for more than a decade and a half. And by the way, Hauschka — the guy who beat him out — went on to win a Super Bowl in Seattle. Two legit careers came out of one Ravens camp battle.

Wil Lutz, 2016

In 2016, the Ravens had the best kicker on planet Earth. There was no vacancy. Zero. And they signed Lutz out of Georgia State anyway, sold him on the idea that a summer in Baltimore’s kicking finishing school would make him better and get him ready for a job somewhere else. Rosburg told ESPN that when the Ravens bring a kicker to camp, they’re looking for a guy who can play in the National Football League — not a camp body to save Tucker’s leg.

Lutz was waived as expected, on August 29, and a week later Sean Payton watched him work out and called it “probably the best kicking workout I’ve ever seen.” Lutz made the PFWA All-Rookie team that year, made a Pro Bowl in 2019, and per his Broncos’ bio, has scored over a thousand points since 2016 — second-most among active kickers in that span. A career that soared like a phoenix from the ashes left after that knock on the door by the Ravens’ Turk.

Kaare Vedvik, 2018-19

And if the developmental argument doesn’t move you, how about the asset argument? The Ravens signed the Norwegian out of Marshall in 2018 with Tucker entrenched and Sam Koch punting. Vedvik went 12-of-13 on preseason field goals across two summers, and after he went 4-for-4 with a 55-yard bomb in the 2019 preseason opener, Baltimore flipped him to Minnesota for a fifth-round pick. John Harbaugh had literally said months earlier that he hoped Vedvik would kick well enough for the Ravens to trade him. Mission accomplished. That’s what a healthy kicking room looks like: worst case, your starter gets pushed. Best case, you mint a draft pick out of thin air.

Kaare Vedvik with Baltimore Ravens - First field-goal was 60, second was 65 and the last field-goal was 70 yards at the Baltimore ravens indoor facility. #oneononetrained #oneononekicking pic.twitter.com/MXqHiO7dpc

— OneOnOne Kicking Camps (@OneOnOneKicking) June 21, 2018

So, What Are They Waiting For?

The logic is clear and simple. The Ravens brought in future Pro Bowl legs when the incumbent was Matt Stover. They brought in future Pro Bowl legs when the incumbent was the greatest kicker of all time. But now, with a second-year sixth-rounder coming off a 1-for-4 season from 50-plus, a league-leading pile of landing-zone infractions on kickoffs, and the most devastating miss in franchise history since Cundiff — now is when we decide competition is too much for the room to handle?

I don’t get it. Iron sharpens iron, and this franchise wrote the book on it. Loop very well may be the guy — the talent is obviously there, and everything out of camp says he’s responded the right way. Fine. Then he’ll beat out whoever walks through the door, and he’ll enter Week 1 having won something instead of having been handed something. And if he can’t beat out a street free agent in August? Better to learn that in Owings Mills in August than in Week 18 with the AFC North on the line. Again.

Sign another leg, Eric.

History says the worst thing that happens is you accidentally develop another Pro Bowler.

The post Time For The Ravens to Get a Leg Up! appeared first on Russell Street Report.

Source: https://russellstreetreport.com/2026/08/17/lombardis-way/tyler-loop-competition/