OUTER LIMITS
What will Justin Tucker do for an encore? Ravens’ trip to Denver could unlock a ‘secret recipe’
Justin Tucker doesn’t know how far he’ll be able to kick a football Sunday, because he doesn’t know how far he’ll be asked to kick one. The Ravens kicker did not go into Sunday’s win over the Detroit Lions expecting to end the game with the NFL’s longestever field goal, and he won’t go to Denver expecting to kick one 5, maybe even 10 yards farther, even though he knows it is possible, very possible indeed.
The life of a kicker requires attention to detail, adherence to technique and an understanding that so much of your job is beyond your control. The line between history and a possible Hail Mary in Detroit was not more than a few feet. A day after Tucker doinked his record-breaking 66-yard field
goal through the uprights in Ford Field, coach John Harbaugh said a kick any farther downfield would’ve been too far to consider attempting. Not even from, say, 68? he was asked.
“I don’t know how you make a 68-yarder,” Harbaugh said. “But, then again, how do you answer that? You can’t really answer it.”
All the most accurate kicker in league history could do in the days after he kicked the longest field goal in league history was prepare for what might be asked of him. It could be extra-point attempts and kickoffs against the undefeated Broncos. Or, in the league’s most kicker-friendly stadium, it could be a field-goal attempt that would have seemed inconceivable only a week ago.
Ten years into Tucker’s singular career, there is no calculus for determining the outer limits of the NFL’s most dependable leg. Three-plus hours before his career-long attempt in Detroit, during pregame warmups, Tucker was twice short from 65 yards. “Thankfully,” he said afterward, “we found an extra yard and a half.”
Making history was hard work. The actual act of kicking a weirdly shaped ball weighing 14 to 15 ounces through goal posts 66 yards away, 10 feet off the