Justin Tucker — NFL Record Holder, Baltimore Ravens Legend, and What Happened After 2024
Justin Tucker signed with the Baltimore Ravens on May 29, 2012, as an undrafted free agent out of Texas. No team picked him in the draft. He made a YouTube video beforehand — 10 field goal attempts, unedited, from different angles and distances, capped with Tucker looking straight into the camera and saying “Pick me.” The Ravens signed him. By the time they released him 13 years later, he had become the most accurate field goal kicker in NFL history.
Career Stats That Still Hold Up
Over 13 seasons and 212 games, Tucker converted 417 of 468 field goal attempts. That’s an 89.1% career rate — the highest in NFL history at the time of his release, now third all-time after the record moved slightly. He made the Pro Bowl seven times. He earned five First-Team All-Pro honors. He won Super Bowl XLVII in his rookie season, going 4-for-4 on field goals during the Ravens’ postseason run and converting two crucial fourth-quarter kicks in a 34-31 win over San Francisco.
His rookie regular season: 30 of 33 field goals. Perfect on extra points. The Ravens hadn’t drafted a kicker in franchise history. They never needed to — until 2025, when they finally did.
A few specific career numbers worth knowing:
- 468 career field goal attempts, 417 made
- 89.1% career field goal percentage
- Seven Pro Bowl selections (2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022)
- Five First-Team All-Pro honors
- Seven game-winning field goals with no time left in regulation — an NFL record
- Career long: 66 yards (since surpassed — more on that below)
His Pro Football Reference HOF Monitor score sits at 81.90. The average enshrined kicker scores 82.23. The statistical case for Canton is real, though that conversation is complicated now for reasons that have nothing to do with field goals.
Four Field Goals to Beat Detroit — Then He Did It Again Eight Years Later
On December 16, 2013, Tucker went to Ford Field in Detroit and kicked six field goals. Every point the Ravens scored in an 18-16 win over the Lions came off his foot. The last one was 61 yards, a game-winner in the final minute, and it set the NFL record for longest field goal in a domed stadium. He also became the first kicker in NFL history to make field goals in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s in the same game.
Eight years later, September 26, 2021, same stadium, same opponent. Same result, bigger kick.
The Ravens trailed 17-16 with three seconds left. The ball sat at Detroit’s 48-yard line. Tucker had missed from 49 yards in the first quarter — his first indoor miss of a career that had spanned 10 seasons. In pregame warm-ups that day, he couldn’t get to 65 yards from either direction.
Lamar Jackson had just converted a fourth-and-19 on a 36-yard pass to Sammy Watkins. Baltimore had no timeouts. Win probability: less than 0.1%, per ESPN Stats and Information. John Harbaugh sent the field goal unit out.
Tucker hit it off the crossbar and through. Ravens 19, Lions 17.
“When it came off my foot and it cleared the line, and I saw about a third or halfway to the uprights,” Tucker said afterward, “I realized that ball was going.” He also admitted that, lining up, he didn’t think he was going to make it — not until he found, in his words, “a little bit of extra momentum into the ball” at the moment of contact.
The 66-yard field goal broke Matt Prater’s record of 64 yards, set in 2013. All 11 players on Baltimore’s field goal unit received a framed photo of the moment. Harbaugh told Tucker on the field: “We’re going to remember this for the rest of our lives.”
That record held until November 2, 2025, when Cam Little of the Jacksonville Jaguars hit a 68-yarder against the Las Vegas Raiders. So Tucker no longer owns the all-time mark, though he held it for four years and two months.
The 2024 Season — A Difficult End to an Era
Tucker finished 2024 converting 22 of 30 field goals — a 73.3% rate that was the worst of his career by a significant margin. From 2016 through 2023, he’d converted 78% of his kicks from beyond 50 yards. In 2024, he made 6 of 11 from 40 yards or longer. In four of Baltimore’s losses that season, he missed at least one kick. In a Week 13 loss to Philadelphia, he missed two field goals and an extra point in the same game — the first time in his career that had happened.
He still had moments. A 56-yard kick to tie the Bengals in Week 5. A 51-yarder against the Steelers in Week 16. But the trend was clear, and the Ravens could see it.
Baltimore signed Tucker to a four-year, $24 million extension in August 2022, making him the highest-paid kicker in the NFL at the time. Three years of that deal remained when they cut him.
The Allegations, the Investigation, and the 10-Game Suspension
In January 2025, The Baltimore Banner published first-hand testimonies from six massage therapists who accused Tucker of sexual misconduct during sessions from 2012 to 2016 — his first five seasons with the Ravens. The number of accusers grew. By the time the NFL concluded its investigation, 16 therapists from eight Baltimore-area spas had made allegations, which included claims that Tucker intentionally exposed himself, made inappropriate physical contact, and left semen on massage tables after three sessions. Several therapists said they ended his sessions early; two spas reportedly banned him from returning.
Tucker denied all of it. His attorneys called the allegations false, legally unprovable, and speculative. Tucker’s own statement said he had “always made a conscious effort to be considerate and respectful” and that it was “devastating” to learn anyone felt otherwise. A second statement in February 2025 denied the allegations again while apologizing “to anyone I have worked with” who felt uncomfortable — without admitting any specific conduct.
The Ravens released him May 5, 2025. General Manager Eric DeCosta publicly framed it as a football decision, pointing to Tyler Loop’s arrival in the sixth round of the 2025 draft — the first time the franchise had ever drafted a kicker. On June 26, the NFL suspended Tucker without pay for the first 10 weeks of the 2025 regular season for violating the league’s personal conduct policy. Tucker declined to appeal, which would have required the disciplinary officer’s findings to be made public.
His agent, Rob Roche, said Tucker wanted to “put this difficult episode behind him and get back on the field as soon as possible” while standing by his denials. The suspension ran from August 26 through November 11, 2025.
The Saints Tryout and Free Agent Status
After reinstatement on November 11, 2025, Tucker worked out with the New Orleans Saints. Saints head coach Kellen Moore acknowledged his track record: “He’s been a really good kicker for a really long time.” New Orleans was looking for kicker help after Blake Grupe had missed two field goals in a Week 12 loss to Atlanta.
The Saints signed Cade York instead.
As of May 2026, Tucker is a free agent. No team has signed him. His situation is genuinely hard to read — a 36-year-old kicker coming off the worst statistical season of his career, carrying serious off-field allegations, competing in a position where teams increasingly develop younger options. The Ravens replaced him with a rookie and didn’t look back.
Whether Tucker plays another NFL snap is an open question. The teams that did reach out after his suspension ended didn’t close the deal.
Personal Life — Houston to Austin to Baltimore
Tucker was born November 21, 1989 in Houston and moved to Austin when he was three years old. His parents, Paul and Michelle, both graduated from the University of Texas. His grandfather, Paul Tucker Sr., played linebacker at Alabama. Tucker describes himself as a lifelong Longhorns fan, which made his college decision simple.
At Texas, he was a four-time member of the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll and majored in recording technology. His college profile lists South Park and Dexter among his favorite TV shows, Al Pacino and Christian Bale as his favorite actors, and Adam Vinatieri as his sports hero. He sang opera in the dorms in college and reportedly got teased for it. His former Texas teammate Emmanuel Acho said Tucker “never met a field goal he didn’t think he could make” — and that the confidence was always genuine, not performance.
He met Amanda Bass at freshman orientation at UT in 2008. They married in March 2015 and have a son, Easton Hayes Tucker. His estimated net worth is around $25 million, accumulated largely through his 2022 contract extension and endorsement work, including a long-running run of Royal Farms commercials in the Baltimore market.
Where He Fits in the All-Time Kicker Conversation
The debate about the greatest NFL kicker is genuinely close. Adam Vinatieri has three Super Bowl rings and a reputation for clutch kicks that spans two decades. Morten Andersen holds the all-time records for games played and total points scored by a kicker. Both are in the Hall of Fame.
Tucker’s claim rests on accuracy above all else. From 2012 through 2023, before the 2024 decline, he converted kicks at a rate nobody had sustained over that long a stretch. He held both the career accuracy record and the long-distance record simultaneously. He’s the only kicker in NFL history with multiple go-ahead field goals of 60-plus yards in the final minute of a game — and both happened at Ford Field in Detroit.
His HOF Monitor score of 81.90 puts him just below the 82.23 average for enshrined kickers, meaning on pure football merit the conversation is real. Whether Hall of Fame voters factor in the conduct investigation is a separate question — one the sport hasn’t had to answer for a kicker before.
The record Tucker is most proud of may be the clutch one. He was 16-for-16 on field goals in the final minute of regulation during his career. Seven of those were game-winners with the clock at zero. That number has no peer in NFL history. Whatever else gets said about him, that part of the record is accurate, documented, and nobody has matched it.
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