RAVENS KICKER JUSTIN TUCKER BECOMES HIGHEST-PAID KICKER IN NFL HISTORY
The Baltimore Ravens have reached an agreement on a four-year contract extension with All-Pro kicker, Justin Tucker, the club announced Monday morning.
The deal is a four-year, $24 million extension that includes $17.5 million in guaranteed money and an $11.5 million signing bonus as per ESPN’s Jamison Hensley. The deal keeps Tucker in Baltimore through 2027 and makes him the highest-paid kicker in NFL history once again on an average of $6 million a year (Steelers kicker, Chris Boswell signed a four-year, $20 million deal last week, matching Tucker’s current $5 million a year deal). Tucker was already under contract for two more years and is tied up now for six. The $17.5 million guaranteed increases his career earnings to $51 million, breaking him into the top 3 all-time among kickers in the NFL.
“I feel beyond blessed. I’m fired up,” Tucker said after signing the contract Monday. “I’m motivated. All the things that I was feeling before I signed. Maybe a little bit more after putting pen to paper. I’m fired up. I’m blessed. I know I get to come to work at an amazing place with amazing people. We get to continue on building something great and working towards championships. Just to know that I will be in the plans for exactly that makes me feel very special.”
The Houston-born kicker is arguably the league’s best kicker and is coming off yet another All-Pro season in 2021. Tucker made 35 of 37 field goal attempts, including a perfect 6-for-6 from 50-plus yards, earning himself his fifth First-team All-Pro selection. He led the league in both field goal accuracy (95.6%) and extra-point accuracy (100%) and set the NFL record for the longest field goal ever in NFL history last year as he nailed a 66-yard game-winner in Detroit, Michigan during the Ravens’ nail-biter against the Lions in week 3. His kick won the NFL’s Moment of the Year award during the NFL Honors this year.
Tucker commented on how quickly he and the team came to an agreement on the contract, saying: “This did come together quickly. I joked to Harbs (John Harbaugh) one day out of practice. We were just, kind of generally talking about the idea. I said, ‘I think something could get done in like 5 minutes’ and sure enough, it took about five minutes. The way that Nick Mateo, Eric DeCosta, and everybody upstairs handled the process was just really, really good. There’s the saying in business, “[for] a good deal maybe neither side gets exactly what they want” but in this case, I believe everybody is super-stoked and I think that makes a great deal.”
“I also appreciate that we were able to handle everything, just with phone calls, emails, good conversations, nothing even close to acrimonious or dramatic. That certainly can happen but to be able to knock out this deal in that way was really, really good.”
“You knew it was going to happen, I’ll leave it at that,” Head Coach Harbaugh said. “Justin is beyond what kind of a kicker he is and all of that, I would say the kind of leader he is, the guy he is to be around. Being out here with the mindset that he takes to it in terms of his work ethic, also his sense of humor, his understanding of the moment.”
Tucker is the most accurate kicker in NFL history with an accuracy percentage of 91.061% and has also proved to be one of the most clutch. Tucker has made 57 straight field goals in the fourth quarter or overtime, banging through 18 game-winning field goals, and has yet to miss a kick in the final minute of regulation, making 16 of 16 field goal attempts. The 2012 undrafted free agent also leads all kickers in the league with the most field goals made over the last 10 seasons (326), ahead of Greg Zuerlein (264), Matt Prater (260), Stephen Gostkowski (251), and Mason Crosby (239). He is also the fastest kicker to make 300 career field goals (148 games), the fastest to reach 1,000 points (118 games). The 32-year-old also leads the league in most seasons with 30 made field goals (7).
A sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famer, Tucker was asked about his Hall of Fame candidacy on Sunday, to which he replied: “I really try not to think about that stuff. I really try to make a point to take it one kick at a time. That’s something that I heard from my agent coming out of college and it’s some of the best advice I ever got. Right next to my grandfather when I was trying out for the high school varsity team at West Lake [High School] in Austin. He said, ‘Justin, just kick the damn ball.’ So between those two principles, less is more, simple is better, I guess.”
“My focus is much more on just taking it one kick at a time, one practice at a time, one game at a time. The individual honors are really cool and you can turn those into a career and you can turn those into a great life for your family. So, yeah, I think about it like, ‘Oh, that’s nice’ but I still got to take it one kick at a time.”
Now the highest-paid kicker in the history of the league, Tucker said his focus wasn’t on the money. “You know, that’s not necessarily at the top of my priority list as far as getting the deal done,” he said. “It certainly has a nice ring to it. I’m not going to deny that but what was and continues to be most important to me is, just being in the plans for building a championship [team], feeling valued as a part of that process. This deal for sure checks all the boxes for me and for all intents and purposes, this is the type of deal that will more than ensure that I will be a raven for life. For that alone, I couldn’t be more happy.”
Tucker has been the gold standard at the position in the past 10 years and has yet to show any signs of slowing down. The agreement is a statement of intent from the front office and could be a good sign for Lamar Jackson who has yet to reach a contract extension agreement with the organization in what now seems like a moment of when he signs rather than if. Jackson confirmed multiple times in the past few weeks that he is currently in negotiations with the team.
-Maher Abucheri
Twitter: @pabloikonyero
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