The Ravens are not treating Tyler Loop’s preseason miss like a crisis, and that part makes sense. A 49-yard kick sailing wide right in the first quarter of an exhibition game is easy to shrug off. But the bigger question hanging over Baltimore is whether the team is being too patient with a kicker who still has a lot to prove.
Loop’s miss last Saturday night was his first live-game attempt since the brutal 44-yard miss in Pittsburgh that closed the 2025 season. That one still looms over everything. It was the kind of ending that sticks, especially for a second-year kicker the Ravens have backed all spring and summer without bringing in any real competition.
Head coach Jesse Minter said Monday that the setup mattered, too.
“I will say it was our first time kicking [on the] new surface down there in the stadium - first time we had been able to get in there,” Minter said. “Normally, we’d have maybe had a practice in there.
We weren’t able to do that because of [stadium events] going on. I feel good about where Tyler’s at.
I think he’s had a really good camp.
“Obviously, it comes down to making them in those situations, so we’ll keep trying to put him out there as much as we can.”
Loop also said after the game that he had gone 40-for-42 in training camp before the miss. That kind of number is encouraging, and it’s the baseline the Ravens wanted after the January heartache in Pittsburgh. Still, camp work only goes so far when the real issue is how he handles pressure.
That’s where the concern starts. Loop didn’t get many chances last season to show he could thrive in high-stress moments before that Week 18 miss.
The biggest one before Pittsburgh came in Week 11, when he tied a game in Cleveland with a 44-yard field goal and five minutes left. Compared with Justin Tucker’s rookie season, when he banked multiple game-winners and kept getting thrown into the fire, Loop’s résumé is still thin.
Even with that, the numbers from his first year weren’t nothing. He went 29-for-30 from inside 50 yards, which is solid work and the kind of steady production teams can live with.
Kickers miss too much around the league for that kind of reliability to be dismissed. But the missed chance in Pittsburgh made every question louder.
The long-range picture is shakier. Loop was just 1-for-4 on attempts from beyond 50 yards, with his lone make coming on his first career field goal, a 52-yarder in Buffalo in the opener.
He also missed a 56-yarder indoors in Minnesota and had another 56-yarder come up short in a narrow Week 16 loss to New England. For a league where 18 kickers made at least five from 50-plus last season, that’s not the kind of range that settles anyone down.
Special teams coordinator Anthony Levine sounded confident earlier this month.
“We’re comfortable putting him anywhere,” Levine said. “We have the confidence in Tyler Loop to go out and make any kick from anywhere on the field, and he has proven that so far in training camp.
… Right now, we love where he’s at. We love his confidence, love him being consistent.
As long as he keeps doing that, he’s going to keep getting better.”
The Ravens want an offense that doesn’t live and die by field goals, as has been the case for much of the Lamar Jackson era. But even then, contenders still need a kicker they can trust when the game tightens and the distance stretches.
That’s the rub here. Baltimore believes in Loop, but there’s no real way to know yet whether he’s the answer in the biggest moments. And with no prime Adam Vinatieri or younger, cleaner version of Tucker waiting on the market, it’s easy to see why Eric DeCosta hasn’t moved for competition.
It’s also fair to ask how long that patience should last. If the Ravens are worried about damaging Loop’s confidence, maybe the bigger issue is whether he’s the right guy to lean on for the long haul.
Baltimore is hoping this calm approach pays off. The risk is waiting too long to find out it won’t.
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