The Ravens Made It Clear That Releasing Justin Tucker Was a Football Decision
Baltimore cut the kicker on Monday, a little over three months after numerous women said he engaged in inappropriate behavior during massage sessions. But in doing so, the team let it be known that the decision was made for football reasons.
The Baltimore Ravens released kicker Justin Tucker on Monday, a little over three months after The Baltimore Banner published a report in which six women from four local spas said that the kicker “engaged in inappropriate behavior” during massage sessions from 2012 to 2016, including exposing his genitals and making unwanted sexual contact with massage therapists. Had the team merely chosen to quietly part ways with the 35-year-old, we would have been left to fill in the blanks on why the move was made. Instead, the Ravens released a statement that made it clear this was strictly a “football decision.”
“Sometimes football decisions are incredibly difficult, and this is one of those instances,” general manager Eric DeCosta said in the release. “Considering our current roster, we have made the tough decision to release Justin Tucker.
“Justin created many significant and unforgettable moments in Ravens history. His reliability, focus, drive, resilience and extraordinary talent made him one of the league’s best kickers for over a decade. We are grateful for Justin’s many contributions while playing for the Ravens. We sincerely wish him and his family the very best in this next chapter of their lives.”
In the statement, there was no mention of the growing list of women, which is now up to 16, who say Tucker harassed them, or of the NFL’s ongoing investigation into the matter. If you had somehow avoided the reports surrounding Tucker over the past three months, you may have seen the statement as a heartwarming nod to a franchise great and not a slimy PR move that was intended to ruffle the fewest feathers. Most players don’t get a prepared statement explaining their release. And despite Tucker’s place in Ravens history, it would have been easy for Baltimore to cut him without lauding his contributions to the team. That certainly would have been the more appropriate move given the circumstances, and it would have fallen in line with the “zero-tolerance” policy head coach John Harbaugh trumpeted shortly after Deshaun Watson was suspended for 11 games for similar behavior in 2022. But by releasing that statement, the Ravens took another path—and showed that their decision was focused purely on the football of it all.
Last year, Tucker made just 73 percent of his field goal attempts. It was by far the lowest percentage of his career (his previous low was 82.5 percent in 2015, and he had six seasons in which he made above 90 percent). On January 22, a week before the Banner’s report dropped, DeCosta was already fielding questions about Tucker’s future with the team. Before the release of the report, Baltimore’s general manager backed the veteran kicker, saying, “I have every expectation that Justin’s going to be a great kicker for us next year.” Then, weeks later, at the NFL combine, both DeCosta and team president Sashi Brown said that they would let the league’s investigation play out before coming to any decision regarding Tucker’s future.
That’s what the team said publicly, but its actions suggest it actively sought Tucker’s replacement during the draft process. Baltimore brought in Florida State kicker Ryan Fitzgerald for a private predraft workout in April and went on to select Arizona’s Tyler Loop in the sixth round. It was the first time the team had drafted a kicker in its nearly 30-year existence. Baltimore seemingly wasn’t just looking for a short-term backup plan in case Tucker wasn’t available; it was looking for a long-term replacement that could make him expendable, no matter what the league’s investigation turned up.
Cutting Tucker also made the most sense from a salary cap standpoint. He still had three years remaining on the $24 million contract he signed in 2022, which made him the highest-paid kicker in league history. By designating him as a June 1 cut, the team will spread his dead cap charge over two years, saving it $4.2 million in cap space. At this point, it’s impossible to say whether Tucker would still have a place on the Ravens roster if his reported pattern of reprehensible behavior hadn’t come to light. While the team publicly said it wouldn’t rush to a decision, it also treated kicker as a position of need throughout the draft process. Tucker hasn’t played any football since DeCosta’s vote of confidence in late January, or since the Banner published its report a week later. If this were just a football decision, the team’s thinking changed without any new football information being added to the equation. Baltimore didn’t seem to treat it like a football decision until the team apparently decided that was the most convenient approach.
Any organization facing a situation of this magnitude should be heavily scrutinized for how it handles it, but Baltimore has earned a brighter spotlight given its track record. There was Ray Rice’s domestic violence case in 2014, which the team handled incredibly poorly, releasing a statement that read, “We know there is more to Ray Rice than this one incident” and a since-deleted tweet that read, “Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role she played the night of the incident.” The Ravens didn't let Rice go until seven months after the incident, when video footage of it was released. Owner Steve Bisciotti later apologized to fans for letting them down, and the team established a zero-tolerance policy in response, according to Harbaugh.
“I respect what Steve Bisciotti has created here—and [team president] Dick Cass—really almost 10 years ago,” Harbaugh said in August 2022. “We’re kind of a zero tolerance. You gotta know the truth, you gotta try to understand the circumstances, but we’ve stayed away from that particular situation when we draft players [and] when we sign them as free agents.”
The Ravens haven’t operated as if there’s a zero-tolerance policy in place, though. Going beyond Tucker, the team just used a second-round pick on Mike Green, who was reportedly left off some teams’ draft boards due to multiple reports of sexual assault. Then it didn’t make Green available to the media during the team’s post-draft press conference (though he spoke to the media in early May). The Ravens also honored Rice as “a legend of the game” during the 2023 season after welcoming him back for the first time in a decade. Terrell Suggs had protective orders taken out against him in 2009 and 2012 (while he was a member of the team) by his then-girlfriend, Candace Williams, who said he had physically abused her over a five-year span. Suggs kept playing for the team until 2018, and he has continued to be welcomed back since. The message is clear: Baltimore’s zero-tolerance policy does not apply if you make (or once made) a big enough contribution on the field.
The Ravens are adamant that releasing Tucker was a football move, and we should take their word for it. They clearly didn’t want to wait around for the league’s investigation to wrap up, as they said they would just two months ago. And they didn’t want to reckon publicly with a sensitive situation—even though they’ve taken a strong verbal stance on similar issues in the past.
Now that the Ravens have cut bait in this way, they’ve let themselves off the hook whenever the league hands down its decision on the matter. And they’ve shown us that, even after all the practice they’ve gotten over the years, they still can’t be trusted to handle these situations competently.
