Justin Tucker‘s tenure with the Ravens has come to an end. The decorated kicker was released on Monday, per a team announcement.
“Sometimes football decisions are incredibly difficult, and this is one of those instances,” a statement from general manager Eric DeCosta reads in part. “Considering our current roster, we have made the tough decision to release Justin Tucker… 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.” 
While this move is significant given Tucker’s lengthy run of success in Baltimore, it does not come as a surprise. The possibility of moving on from the 35-year-old has loomed throughout the offseason. On-field matters were cited as the reason why a release would take place during the official comments on the subject from the team’s decision makers, but today’s news also comes amid a backdrop of sexual misconduct allegations.
16 massage therapists have accused Tucker of inappropriate conduct dating back to the early portions of his NFL career. Denials of any wrongdoing have emerged on two occasions, and the Ravens made it clear in the wake of a league investigation being opened they would wait until its conclusion to make a decision. In spite of that, CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones reports the matter is still being reviewed.
Prior to the draft, Tucker was informed by the Ravens the team could select a kicker. In the rare instances when teams do so, veteran incumbents are usually replaced. That will indeed be the case in this instance as well. Tyler Loop – selected in the sixth round of this year’s draft – is now the only kicker on Baltimore’s roster. Barring an addition for training camp, he will be tasked with replacing the NFL’s all-time most accurate kicker.
Tucker (a former undrafted free agent who took over kicking duties as a Ravens rookie in 2012) played a key role in the team’s Super Bowl victory that year. From that point on, he enjoyed a strong run of consistency, with his field goal success rate ranging from 82.5% to 97.4%. The 2010s All-Decade team member connected on a 66-yard field goal attempt in 2021, breaking the record for the longest in NFL history.
The 2024 campaign saw a notable downturn in accuracy, however. A midseason slump resulted in Tucker missing a total of 10 kicks (eight field goals, two extra points) during the season. A return to form late in the campaign did little to quell questions about a change at the position being on the horizon. That became especially true when news of the allegations broke.
Jeff Zrebeic of The Athletic notes Tucker will be designated a post-June 1 release, which represents the more feasible financial route from the team’s perspective. This move will generate $4.2MM in cap savings while incurring a dead money charge of $2.87MM. Three years remained on the five-time All-Pro’s contract, one which carried an average annual value of $6MM (the second-highest figure in the league for kickers).
While the Ravens will move forward with a new kicker for the first time in 13 years, attention will turn to the results of the league investigation. Tucker’s future in the NFL – if he has one – will no doubt depend in large part on the findings of the NFL probe.
Why release him instead when they could’ve just traded him to Cleveland?
😂
Stop! That’s an insult to all Browns fans and a very storied franchise. This conduct by any player shouldn’t be joked about, period.
Traci explain your QB then who has twice the accusations and yet has a fully guaranteed contract.
Hes not my QB. Fans didn’t want him. Haslam the owner did and he’s paid dearly for it….
I agree in the fans didn’t want him. You said “an insult to Browns fans and a very storied franchise.” The Browns fans are great and deserve better, but the newest version of the Browns is not a franchise worthy of respect.
They were a storied franchise … until Modell moved them to Baltimore.
The Ravens did their investigation and found way too many red flags and poof…gone. The Ravens do not screw around when ugly allegations or video shows up…Ray Rice comes to mind
On the other hand, they just drafted a guy who was off a lot of teams’ draft boards for multiple sexual assault allegations, including one that got him kicked off his first college team.
I love how every draft guru slobbered all over the Mike Green pick, saying how brilliant they were for drafting him. Like, he didn’t fall because teams didn’t know how talented he is…
Yeah just like they did with Mike Green wonder we he was kicked out of Virginia before ending up at Marshall???
When Green got drafted Turner had to go. There are only so many sex offenders you can have on 1 team.
His allegations span for years…they cut him because he is old and no longer automatic. They would have known some of those rumors when he was good.
But they can use the narrative that its the allegations to deflect against drafting Green with lengthy similar allegations….perhaps worse.
They may have known something for years, but the public knowing about it is an important change.
Exactly.
Ummm…Ray Lewis
Exactly
“The Ravens do not screw around when ugly allegations”
lol, Ray Lewis says hello.
Yet they draft Mike Green 🤔
From Ray Rice to Harvey Weinstein to Justin Tucker, people sure do face consequences for their behavior a lot more readily when they’re not as successful at their jobs as they used to be.
Not everyone can be a mortician and bury their mistakes 🙂
Tell that to Kansas City
When was Tucker convicted of anything??
Someone needs to be convicted of a crime in a court of law to be sent to prison, not for an employer to decide to part ways with them.
He was released from his contract. For now, all that’s against him are allegations. Not arguing whether or not he did what’s alleged. The team may or may not know anything else. Who knows what their private investigators/attorneys found out. That’s their private work product sealed under lock and key. There aren’t any established behaviors to have consequences from. Something called due process and rule of law, which is prevents village muppets from arming themselves with pitchforks and knives.
They would be within their legal rights and reasonable football decision making to release him from his contract simply because he wasn’t very good anymore. Due process is not an applicable term here. If you’re worried about due process, worry about the people being sent to a foreign country’s prison without being convicted of any crimes and without being returned.
It’s called Right to work and an employer doesn’t need a reason to terminate you…
Right to work doesn’t apply here either. Tucker is a union member with a contract in a non right to work state. It doesn’t not violate his contract to cut him any more than it violated Russell Wilson’s when Denver released him from his.
Not sure why autocorrect snuck in a not after doesn’t.
Cleveland offered him 240 Mil fully guaranteed
…to be their quarterback…
Can’t be worse than Watson.
Browns will now sign him to a 4 year fully guaranteed contract.
Those pesky “message therapists” from the fourth paragraph….
Hopefully he didn’t do anything to the message therapist who wrote out his release statement
Object lesson for the Chiefs K. We’ll put up with you, until you start missing kicks.
Abject lesson.
This has nothing to do with on field and everything to do with the “sexual assault” allegations against him. Don’t fool yourselves Baltimore. Half the NFL is thanking you for cutting him. These rejected females are only looking for a paycheck. These NFL players are easy targets.
Don’t be that guy
You have to inform the neighbors when you move into a neighborhood, don’t you ActionDan?
Wrong
These rejected females? Wow. How do you manage with such a tiny brain?
As someone whose wife is a professional sports massage therapist, I can honestly say you have no clue what you are talking about. But then again probably can’t expect much more from someone who posts an opinion like this without knowledge of the situation other than media influence. Pretty sad…
My question is why is it a issue years later. If he did something inappropriate why wasn’t it addressed that day. Teams need to invest in their own massage employee and hire a man.
Women shouldn’t be banned from working with men simply because men can’t control their willys
Apparently this was a rumor that has been going around locally for a few years
My question is why people like you always ask this question. There’s a power dynamic in place, people afraid of retaliation, of losing their job, of not knowing they’re not alone, psychological damage, disbelief at what happened, etc. There’s a million reasons why things don’t come out “that day”. Life ain’t perfect.
Blech!! A MALE masseuse??? Blech…I’m no pervy like certain Kickers I could name, but some things, while 100% NOT sexual, need to be Ladies only. If I’m getting a massage, it needs to be a Lady doing it, not some big fat hairy guy fondling my muscles, thank you very much. BLECH.
and again, sports players are guilty before innocent
If it’s one accusation, sure. But once you are in the double digits, you lose the benefit of the doubt. Also, these are just our opinions. He’s not being convicted of anything.
Guilty before innocent? I bet you some very highly paid private investigators have found out damn well what the truth is.
Don’t overestimate the ability of private investigators, Oof. I’m not taking a position on Tucker’s guilt or innocence either way, but everyone should always bear in mind the fact that not being there means by default that all information you get has come through a filter. Saying someone looks guilty or the information available suggests that is one thing; taking it as actual fact is another. Don’t assume or treat something as fact that hasn’t been properly verified.
This is not a defense of Tucker (or even about Tucker’s specific case necessarily), this is just a general caution from my experience of having dealt with a few of these sorts of things. I myself start to formulate opinions based on what I read, especially if I can try to verify it across other sources, but at the end of the day anything you hear second or third hand has gone through a filter. Even if the general gist could be correct, the details are usually where those types of accounts get murky. And details are important, too, especially in these cases.
Just bear that in mind when you read these types of articles-everything we’re getting now is second hand. This is also, by the way, the same issue that Private Investigators have, and while good ones can get a lot of information, it might not all be verified, so bear that in mind.
OK. But guilty beyond a reasonable doubt isn’t even the standard for civil suits, let alone not wanting someone in your building anymore. In a case like this, private investigators can certainly find out enough to make a team confident a guy has been poorly behaved, even if it doesn’t come near the standard of what a criminal conviction would require. Just like the NFL suspended Big Ben knowing damn well there had been funny business in the police investigation.
I know what you’re saying. But I’m not talking about standards of proof, even. There are people who have been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt who were, as we know, not guilty. What I’m saying is that we, as members of the public, should bear in mind that we know very little about what actually happened, if the reports are generally accurate. It’s don’t think that people should be barred from having opinions, but we do need to keep it in our minds that our conclusions are really formed from secondhand or third hand information.
Don’t focus too much on the standards of proof-it’s relevant, in a way, because there’s a reason that hearsay and similar information isn’t generally allowed in most states beyond the probable cause stage-but it’s just more about having in the back of your mind the acknowledgment that this information, even if it’s reported in good faith, is still filtered through an additional source. I’m not saying that you or anyone else shouldn’t have an opinion, or even change it in this case, but I’m just offering my experience in saying that unverified information, while potentially useful, still isn’t ironclad fact until it’s verified. Opinions are one thing (I’d say inevitable things, actually), but we should separate them from conclusions.
That’s how I would investigate this, were it my responsibility. Gather information, separate out the facts, and come to a conclusion at the end with it all in hand. As members of the public, often we get a ton of information, but rarely do we get facts. Again, not saying that any of this false-that’s not at all what I mean in the slightest-but while potentially useful, they’re not necessarily facts, either.
I get that. In this case, I also come back to the first thing I posted, which is that successful people are much more likely to face consequences for their behavior if they’re not so successful anymore. The Ravens would probably be looking to take their next step at kicker if it were only on-field stuff with Tucker.
Definitely no argument there. If that 66 yarder were last year, perhaps these accusations would be entering their first years of high school before they came out…
Very well said. Thank you.
Time for the Browns to set a record for largest fully guaranteed Kicker contract.
Don’t worry Cleveland, he already sucks!
It would be poetic if he signs with Cleveland.
My first Ravens jersey: Ray Rice
My next Ravens jersey: Justin Tucker
I dunno but I think I might be done with jerseys.
Sprinkle in a ray lewis and you got the felony trifecta
Nope, go with Green
just go with a throwback player who still has a good reputation. or find the most obscure name that you can
Ravens should have waited for league to complete investigation. Seems premature and now the ladies want to get paid. Better hope the rookie kicker doesn’t cost them important games next season. Best of luck Tucker on your new team. You won a lot of games for Ravens since 2012 and deserve better.
Other than Cleveland, no other team is going to pick him up unless he’s cleared by the NFL.
kicking on the lower end of 70% i would think would be costing them games. He was going to get competition regardless of if its a rookie kicker or not. That man cost me some games in my fantasy league last year for sure.
He knew the accusations were coming out and was distracted. He will re-focus his kicking after the teams determine his suspension before one of them signs him.
Incel comment
Can only continue playing football with sex allegations if you can throw the ball. Not kick
Message therapist is an awesome name for a PR flack.
That 66 yarder should come with an explanation to the benefit of the Lions, in my mind. That kick, as impressive as it was for Tucker, should have never occurred. Unfortunately for Lions fans, the officials messed up (and as usual, the NFL did nothing). I don’t hold that against the Ravens or Tucker-they did what they were supposed to-but the NFL really irks me with how they mess up their own games and refuse to actually fix any of it.
I used to tell people that I always went to the bathroom or to get another drink whenever Tucker came in for a field goal try, because I already knew what a made field goal looked like. His range was essentially anywhere from the stadium parking lots and in. And I say these things as a Steeler fan… I’m not happy if these allegations turn out to be true, as one would expect them to based on the sheer mountain of accusations. He’s tarnished a formerly fine career.
Was he hanging out with Watson.
Deshaun Watson: HUG ME BROTHAAAAA
Come to sf plenty of massage parlors here
All this allegedly happened a DECADE ago, yet it comes out only now, in the wake of him suddenly falling off a performance cliff?? I call BoolSheet.
They knew all along. For a team with a short history, the Ravens have a LONG history of tolerating evil. Looking at YOU, Ray Lewis. ALLEGEDLY.
I rarely do this, but what a boner here, literally. This day and age, how stupid can you be, and for goodness sake, if that’s his gig, don’t hire a masseuse. Everyone’s getting tired of you know what’s like this as male heteros ruining the culture, you freak.
Nice photo by the way. Justin probably thinking about his next massage.
probably thinking about getting into the piss game with julian as his next endeavor
The NFL has a real problem. They need to learn from MLB. Trevor Bauer had some sick allegations against him. He was suspended 365 days, arbitrator reduced it to 180….he has not pitched for an MLB team since. Didn’t matter what the justice system said. No team wanted that in their clubhouse…
DeShawn Watson should have been suspended for life, as should Tucker. Sexual assault, domestic violence have no place in professional sports. If these players can’t conduct themselves at a high standard, ban them. Let them go find a blue collar job….
Well, I don’t think that I’d use Bauer as an example, since he wasn’t actually at fault, but I do agree. Two high profile cases in the last few years-with dozens of accusers-should prompt some type of response. Sure, most players don’t probably engage in that, but now that there’s two, I’m sure that an organization so focused on P.R. would try to get something done policy-wise to at least put it on paper.
I don’t know if I would suspend someone immediately on an accusation (I mean, looking at Bauer, there’s a pretty argument to let the process play out), but it still feels like there should some type of middle ground for temporary action that could be, possibly, reversible should the player be cleared of the accusation.
Perhaps a more prompt exempt list addition in credible cases, with the possibility of back pay if restoration occurs? That way, the player is out and not playing (like Watson with the Texans, and in theory with the Browns), but has the ability for some type of recompense if he’s cleared, and the team might not cut him prematurely (like Araiza with the Bills). Seems more fair.
Didn’t know having a woody while getting rubbed on in various leg muscles by the ladies could get you banned from football Tracie as you proclaim. This was not sexual assault.
Tucker had a stretch of games mid season where he was off but finished strong over the last month. He’ll end up in the league this upcoming year.
If he was still the best kicker in the game he’d be on the squad – but his distance and accuracy have been falling off. His age also makes walking away easier than having to deal with the uncertainty of his availability.
No happy ending for him today!
49ers should be all over this. Jake Moody is trash and has been the cause of several heart attacks within the 49ers community
No one can say he didn’t leave it all on the table.