ExtremeRavens Posted Monday at 12:30 PM Posted Monday at 12:30 PM PITTSBURGH — It’s hard to replace a legend, and it’s even harder when you are a rookie kicker and a miss costs the team a chance to make the playoffs. Tyler Loop, the Ravens’ sixth-round draft pick last April out of Arizona, missed a 44-yard field goal attempt as time expired in the Ravens’ 26-24 loss to Pittsburgh on Sunday night before a crowd of 65,400 at Acrisure Stadium. The winner of the game would go on to secure the No. 4 seed in the seven-team AFC playoffs, and the Ravens seemed on course to play the Houston Texans on Jan. 12 in Baltimore. But Loop’s kick went wide right, and it touched off wild celebration by the Pittsburgh partisan crowd. The Ravens weren’t so happy. “You know the emotion, like that’s we did all that, man, to come up short bro, you know? Devastated,” Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson said. “Furious. All types of. I don’t know. I’m everywhere with it right now.” Loop was having a strong season, having converted on 29 of 33 field goal attempts and 41 of 43 extra point tries. But regardless of his success, the final verdict of a kicker is determined in the postseason in windy, wintry conditions in places such as Denver, Buffalo or even Pittsburgh. Loop finally faced those conditions and postseason pressure against the Steelers and failed. “Just for it to end like that sucks, and I do want to do better,” Loop said. “Unfortunately, the nature of the kicker’s job is you have makes, and those are awesome, and unfortunately you have misses, and for that to happen tonight sucks. “Those guys have my back and I want to try my best to have theirs. It’s disappointing, and it sucks, but also the nature of the job is I have to move on, and I have to get ready for the next kicks. I’ll spend the offseason and the rest of the time getting ready for that. I love this team and I love these guys, and I wish it had ended differently.” Of the kick, Loop said he caught a little bit of the ground but the operation was great. “I just mishit the ball. We call it hitting it thin,” Loop added. Loop followed a legend in Baltimore. The Ravens had Justin Tucker for 13 seasons, but waived him in May after he violated the NFL’s personal conduct policy stemming from allegations of sexual misconduct by Baltimore-area massage therapists. Tucker was Mr. Automatic on the field. Ravens kicker Tyler Loop explains what happened on the 44-yard field goal attempt that sailed wide right as time expired and ended Baltimore's season. pic.twitter.com/DLLpA2bftJ — The Baltimore Sun (@baltimoresun) January 5, 2026 He was a five-time All-Pro and a seven-time Pro Bowl selection. He converted on 417 of 468 field goal attempts which put him around 90% for his career, among the best marks in league history. When the game was on the line, you wanted Tucker on your team. But Loop struggled Sunday night. He not only failed on the game-winning field goal attempt, but also had a kickoff miss the landing zone, his eighth kickoff penalty, which is three more than any other kicker in the NFL. His poor kickoff led to Pittsburgh getting the ball on its own 40-yard line and scoring on a 2-yard run by Kenneth Gainwell to complete an eight-play, 60-yard drive with 3:49 remaining. The score gave Pittsburgh a 20-17 lead. It just wasn’t Loop’s day. “I talked to him during the game because I kind of was livid at him when he kicked the ball out of bounds,” Jackson said. “But I told him, you know, I’m just hype because of the emotions of the game right now. I felt like it was going to come down to him to win the game for us because of how the game was going. He’s a rookie. It’s all good, Just leave it in the past, man.” Ravens coach John Harbaugh used to be the special teams coach in Philadelphia for years. He talked to Loop after the game. “I don’t remember what I said,” Harbaugh said. “I had him. I talked to him and walked with him and just had a conversation with him, between him and me.” You feel sympathy for Loop. When he converted a 40-yard field goal with 13:33 left in the second quarter to push the Ravens ahead, 10-0, there were the usual chants of “Loop” coming from Ravens fanatics. But the Ravens need to get those directional kickoffs under control this offseason, and Loop won’t become “The Guy” until he converts field goals in crunch time in the postseason. That’s the way it goes in the NFL, especially for kickers. Have a news tip? Contact Mike Preston at epreston@baltsun.com, 410-332-6467 and x.com/MikePrestonSun. View the full article Quote
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