ExtremeRavens Posted 2 hours ago Posted 2 hours ago As Ravens kicker Tyler Loop stepped out of a hotel in downtown Cleveland on a gray, raw and blustery Sunday afternoon last month, he watched helplessly as his backward cap flew off his head and tumbled 20 yards down the street. It was a perfect precursor of the day’s work ahead in the pivotal matchup against the AFC North rival Browns. “Kicking into the Dawg Pound is one of the hardest kicks in all of football,” his long snapper, Nick Moore, told The Baltimore Sun. “The wind is so unpredictable coming off the lake, being cold, the surface of the ground is different. It all plays into executing your kick, and it’s a very hard thing to do there.” Loop, a sixth-round rookie out of Arizona who grew up in suburban Dallas, navigated the treacherous conditions — temperature around 30 degrees, wind swirling a steady 10 mph and gusting as high as 30 — accurately and with aplomb. He made all three field goal attempts, including a 44-yarder into the teeth of the east end zone with just over 5 minutes remaining to pull Baltimore even at 16-16 before an eventual 23-16 victory. “It’s been a super fun ride,” Loop told The Sun. His play this year has also been superb. Amid a season of tumult that has included underwhelming performances and an enumeration of inconsistencies from two-time NFL Most Valuable Player and quarterback Lamar Jackson as well as a middling defense, the 24-year-old with the boyish grin has been Baltimore’s steadiest and most reliable performer. In a dozen games, Loop has connected on 22 of 24 field goal attempts, including on all 19 from inside 50 yards. His conversion rate of 91.7% is tied with the Dallas Cowboys’ Brandon Aubrey for fourth-best in the NFL (minimum 20 attempts) behind only the San Francisco 49ers’ Eddy Pineiro, the New York Jets’ Nick Folk and the Los Angeles Chargers’ Cameron Dicker. He has also done so while taking over for one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history, Justin Tucker, who was released this past offseason before being suspended 10 weeks by the NFL for violating its personal conduct policy following a league investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen massage therapists from several Baltimore area spas and wellness centers. That Loop, who became the first kicker the Ravens spent a draft pick on, was able to steer through both was a testament to his confidence. The signs that he could were also there early. Longtime Ravens senior special teams assistant Randy Brown was sold on Loop the night the two had dinner at The Monica, a fast-casual restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, popular with students and where the Lou Groza Award semifinalist who’d made a school-record 62-yarder his senior season rearranged some tables and chairs to demonstrate his process. Over the course of the 2 1/2 hours the two nerded out about kicking and all its technicalities. Afterward, Brown texted coach John Harbaugh that they’d found their guy. “Tyler had outstanding foot-to-ball contact throughout his years at Arizona,” Brown told The Sun recently. “So, when you have really good foot-to-ball contact and a swinging plane that goes towards the goal post, you can kind of translate that into hitting a straight ball in windy conditions.” Other tangibles that Loop would be able to weather the storm — literally and figuratively — stood out as well. “When you have somebody that technically knows his craft — it’s never a fail-safe — but you definitely believe that they can carry that technique and that process forward in high-leverage situations,” Brown said. “Kicking in wind and kicking in the north, you’re in those high-leverage situations more often than not, especially kicking for a winning team.” Still, that technique needed tinkering, and a lot of it, Loop and Brown said. For starters, NFL kicking balls are slightly larger in length and circumference than those used in college, so the sweet spot is different. Loop’s foot also met leather lower on the ball than it does now. His routine before a game also needed an overhaul. In college, Loop said, it wasn’t consistent and required little thought. Now, on the Friday before a Sunday game he has the same script of kicks that he will execute during warmups inside the stadium on Sundays. That includes his taking five kicks with no steps, five with one step and five full kicks. Then he’ll try eight field goals in one direction before taking eight in the other, usually maxing out at 60 or sometimes 65 yards depending on the location. “As far as progress made, just confidence and my process in being a professional when it comes to how we prepare game day,” Loop said. “I think I did well in college, but at this level the demand to be at a high level is even more so.” The adaptation hasn’t taken long. “He’s learned a ton,” Moore said. “I think he’s handling it very professionally and doing a really good job of trying to be consistent. In our job, that’s the hardest thing, to go out and be able to replicate the same action every time you step on the field. “He’s honed up on the leans of the ball. He’s getting much better at his ball contact. He’s getting more down the field on his swing. He’s being a lot more aggressive. It’s a very confident stroke that he’s got going on right now. He’s come a long way since he got here.” He also had to quickly prove that he could deliver. In the opening quarter of a Week 1 game against the Bills, the Ravens were down 7-0 when their opening drive had just stalled at Buffalo’s 34-yard line. Harbaugh wasn’t sure whether he wanted to go for it or attempt the 52-yard field goal at a breezy Highmark Stadium. He looked at Moore and the long snapper said, “Let’s kick the damn ball.” “I stuck my neck out there,” Moore cracks. “And he did a great job. He crushed it right down the middle. For him, [52] yards, first kick in a tough environment in Buffalo when there was a 50-50 chance we were even gonna try the field goal, he went out there and executed. That was his welcome to the NFL moment.” Ravens kicker Tyler Loop, right, follows through on a kick in a recent win over the Bears. Loop has been stellar as a rookie, making 91.7% of his field-goal attempts this season. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff) Not all of them have been so gleaming, though. Early in the fourth quarter and with Baltimore having just scored a touchdown to extend its lead to 40-25, Loop missed the extra point, the ball clanging off the right upright. The Bills went on to win, 41-40. The league’s dynamic kickoff also took some getting used to. Four times in the first three weeks of the season, Loop was flagged for kickoffs coming up short of the landing zone and once for a kickoff that went out of bounds. Since then, he’s had just one kick go out of bounds and none that have landed short of the landing zone. “The dirty-ball kicks, you can’t practice them too much, because you don’t want the swing plane to change and the stroke to change,” Brown said. “We practice it once a week, and we’ll hit a few balls in a direction, depending on where the return of the wind is. It’s all about where you strike the ball, which obviously, you have to strike the ball a little higher to get it to drive more. But, we’re very smart and cognizant about how much we actually practice it, because it cannot change the swing plane for field goals and then the regular kickoffs.” While the Buffalo loss also lingered in the minds of players in the weeks that followed amid a 1-5 start, it did not for Loop. He had already built a well of confidence that took root in the preseason, Moore said. In the Ravens’ second preseason game, Loop connected on 5 of 6 field goal attempts, including two from beyond 50 yards. His lone miss was a 50-yarder in the fourth quarter, but he bounced back on the next possession to drill a 53-yarder. That was all the coach needed to see. After Loop beat out undrafted rookie free agent John Hoyland earlier in training camp, he was officially named the starting kicker that night and the next week in the preseason finale he made a 61-yarder in Washington. “It’s easy to make a mistake and miss a field goal like that and let it affect the rest of your performance in that game,” Moore said of the missed boot in Dallas. “When you kick that, you go sit on the sideline and you don’t know when your next opportunity is gonna be. You get a lot of time to yourself, to think, get your mind and your wheels spinning. It’s hard to balance that with the realization that we’re gonna get another opportunity and I can’t let this get in the way of what I’m gonna do in the future. For him to power drive that next field goal right down the middle, to me that was like, oh this kid’s got it.” Months later, that much has been obvious. “He’s definitely a student of kicking, but he’s just such a steady personality,” Harbaugh said. “He’s such an even[-keeled], good-natured kind of guy. He doesn’t really get rattled. If the kick doesn’t go exactly right, he’s able just to look at it scientifically and say, ‘OK, this is what happened or didn’t happen.’ He doesn’t get in his head too much about it, I think, and that’s probably really important for a kicker.” That will be especially important over the next five weeks. Ravens kicker Tyler Loop celebrates after making a 61-yard field goal during the preseason. Loop has the skills to be a longtime NFL kicker. (Stephanie Scarbrough/AP) At 6-6, the Ravens are tied atop the division with the Pittsburgh Steelers, who will play in Baltimore on Sunday. In addition to a home finale against the 11-2 New England Patriots on Dec. 21, the Ravens also have road games in Cincinnati, Green Bay and Pittsburgh remaining, all of which figure to have difficult conditions to kick in. But as much as the rest of the team has struggled to be consistent, there is plenty of evidence and belief that won’t be a problem for Loop. “He’s comfortable in his own skin,” Moore said of Loop, adding that the kicker has relied heavily on his faith as he made the transition to the NFL to replace an embattled player that he long idolized. “Justin was one of one. He was a special player for a long time here. You can’t try to come in and be that guy. “Overall, I don’t think we could’ve asked for a better guy to come into that spot.” Have a news tip? Contact Brian Wacker at bwacker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/brianwacker1. View the full article Quote
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