NFL Trade Rumors
The Baltimore Ravens elected to release veteran K Justin Tucker amidst the NFL’s ongoing investigation into him for sexual misconduct. John Harbaugh explained they need to get their team ready for the 2025 season and need a kicker ready to go.
“I mean, you’re talking about arguably the best kicker in the history of the game,” Harbaugh said, via Jamison Hensley of ESPN. “And like we said, it’s multi-layered [and] it’s complicated. But in the end, it all comes back to what you have to do to get ready for your team to play the first game. And I think if you step back and you take a look at all the issues and all the ramifications, you can understand that we’ve got to get our football team ready and we’ve got to have a kicker to go. And that was the move that we decided to make.”
Harbaugh said they made a “football decision” with Tucker.
“So in that sense, it’s a football decision and now we have to spend all of our focus and our time to get these kickers ready. We’ve got a competition going on and [we’ve got to] get these guys ready to make kicks. So that’s all I’m thinking about. From my perspective, it’s like, ‘We have to have a kicker out there making kicks,’ and what’s the best way to get that done?”
Harbaugh reiterated they need a kicker who is ready to play.
“Like I just said, it’s a multilayer decision. If it was just a black and white simple thing, then it would be easy to understand, but I think anybody can look at the whole thing in perspective and say, ‘OK, we’ve got to have a kicker ready to go,’ and there’s a whole lot of moving parts of that deal. It is just the reality of it.”
