Michigan’s Allen tries to get foot in NFL door
have, the guys they have here, is there a better staff and better group in the country?” he says. “Being able to learn from those guys and take those types of things in, it’s the best thing I could ask for. You look at the track record of guys in recent years who came though and learned. Now they’re off with other teams living their dreams.” player for the franchise.
Before Tucker there was Steven Hauschka, an undrafted free agent who’d kicked for one year as a graduate student at North Carolina State. The Ravens brought him in to share duties with Matt Stover and he eventually became a Pro Bowl kicker for the Seattle Seahawks.
Graham Gano and Robbie Gould also spent time with the Ravens before going on becoming starters in other cities.
Lutz’s experience last year loomed large for Allen when he chose a team. The Ravens signed Lutz out of Georgia State and kept him around almost all summer before waiving him Aug. 29. From there, they pivoted immediately to helping him get a job somewhere else. Coach John Harbaugh praised him to Saints counterpart Sean Payton when the teams played each other in their final preseason contest. Brown, one of the most respected kicking gurus in the sport, also worked the phones on the rookie’s behalf.
New Orleans gave him a tryout and when he nailed it, they released veteran Kai Forbath. Lutz went on to make 28 of 34 field goals and earn All-Rookie honors.
He often gushed about his summer apprenticeship with the Ravens.
“To be going [to Baltimore] was the best thing that’s happened to me,” he told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “Through the whole process they told me, if you’re not our guy, you’re going to be someone else’s. I trusted them. I did everything they taught me to do.”
Such results have become points of pride for the Ravens, even if they don’t directly benefit the team on the field.
“We’re sitting here trying to create another kicker in this league,” Koch says. “And we look at that as an accomplishment. You look at a Wil Lutz. Most of that’s done by him and his talent and his willingness to listen. But we’re looking to take what we know and give it to younger guys.”
Allen has already lived through versions of his current challenge.
He walked on at Michigan rather than accept a scholarship at Oregon State or one of several Mid-American Conference schools. And he surprised himself by earning his first starts as a placekicker rather than as a punter, the position at which he’d earned more accolades coming out of high school. Sometimes, he was trying to take snaps from established scholarship players and others, he was trying to ward off competition from unexpected corners.
Before he was old enough to drink legally, he learned the importance of flexibility and adaptability in the modern job market. It was a sort of football facsimile of the landscape millennials face in almost every industry.
“I mean, it’s not the dream choice — uncertainty,” he says. “But you just have to accept it and control what you can control.”