The Ravens are telling you they have a crisis of confidence with one position group above and beyond all else.
They want you to believe than an inconsistent second-year kicker – which is the norm and whom they refused to push with a veteran challenger all offseason long until right before final cuts – is what’s holding them back. Not the incompetent general manager who won a power struggle with John Harbaugh’s coaching staff and brought in a new one of his own choosing and still can’t fix the offensive line or pass rush or fourth-quarter defense or get the two-time MVP quarterback signed to a contract extension.
Nope, it's Tyler Loop who's the biggest issue.
It’s not that they have a collection of five-to-six of the worst, most-bloated contracts in the NFL, all of Eric DeCosta’s making. And now they want you to believe that DeCosta making a panic move to land a struggling guard who was in concussion protocol and couldn’t even play for two weeks is going to transform this OL. Okay, fine, three weeks from the trade deadline let’s play their game.
And when rookie head coach Jesse Minter refuses to really lean into his defense sucking in coverage against bad QBs with 10-point leads week after week, but instead gives us a dissertation on a kicker who missed with the season on the line last year (yet no one did anything to push him and just talked him up all summer), we'll listen. We'll even take him at his word about what’s really holding this football team back as the Ravens opted to bring back Jake Moody, a failed journeyman kicker to this point, on the practice squad.
“There is a confidence level for how (Loop) prepares and how he practices and how he operates and how he strikes the ball, but at the same time, that position itself is completely results-driven,” Minter said Monday. “So, we'll continue to work with him and continue to try to put him in position, but we need to make second-half kicks. You could argue that second-half missed field goals are no different than turning the ball over in those situations. So, definitely something we want to keep striving to be better at."
He won’t say a bad word about the guys making $20M a year on his defense who never make a play, but Loop is the boogeyman. Okay, so do something about it then. because trying to sell Moody as some major upgrade is silly.
You want me to believe you are a kicker away? Go get this guy:
Dicker The Kicker
The Chargers are a joke at 0-6 and facing existential questions about Justin Herbert’s future there and Jim Harbaugh is no spring chicken and it’s this now a rebuild? Their owners are notoriously cheap and the expectation from other GMs is the Chargers start shedding salary during their bye week and reposition themselves by the deadline. They need help all over and will covert draft picks and kicker Cameron Dicker doesn’t make big money - so that’s not a big savings - but wouldn't he be worth much more to a contender?
How much is the best kicker in the NFL from 2024-2026 (91.5%) who is making just $4.25M with a manageable $5.7M cap figure (slash those totals in half if you got him midway through the season) worth to a team that fancies itself a Super Bowl contender? Go get one of the guys who knocked disgusting Justin Tucker off the mantle atop the kicking game and get him in his prime (well, he has missed two kicks this season).
But if you want to pretend Loop didn’t need competition then, and that Moody is maybe better than him now, then just go get the real thing. How much are game-winning kicks worth? Two years left on this deal, DeCosta’s old buddy Joe Hortiz is the GM with the Chargers (longtime Ravens exec) they hooked up on the Odafe Oweh deal a year ago. After what DeCosta just gave up for Cam Jurgens, trust me, Hortiz will listen.
Go get a legit kicker (maybe Chase McLaughlin from the fading Bucs). If this is a the big problem – of DeCosta’s creation, of course – then get real about fixing it.
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