On the third day of this 12 months’s draft, the Ravens drafted a kicker for the primary time of their 30-year history, taking Arizona’s Tyler Loop with the 186th pick. Despite getting undercut by the Patriots, who took the primary kicker of the draft 4 picks earlier, the Ravens insisted that Loop was all the time their intended goal. In accordance with Jeff Zrebiec of The Athletic, though, Loop’s path to the 53-man roster will not be unchallenged.
On the conclusion of the Ravens’ Organized Team Activities and mandatory minicamp, Zrebiec listed a lot of players whose stock went up or down. Loop was included as a player whose stock was trending down. While, at times, Loop showed his big leg with some long conversions, there have been multiple reports of days by which he struggled with each consistency and accuracy from distance.
Per Zrebiec, Loop is making some changes to his technique and kicking motions on the behest of the team’s senior special teams coach, Randy Brown. While that could be contributing to his early issues, it’s concerning to see the drafted kicker struggle. One could also account it to the pressure of replacing probably the most accurate kicker in NFL history, but playing for a perennial playoff contender, pressure is something Loop goes to should cope with.
There’s added pressure on Loop from some competition that the Ravens brought in shortly after the draft. Considered one of the team’s undrafted free agents this 12 months was Wyoming kicker John Hoyland. Neither kicker was very accurate during their collegiate years. Loop began strong, going 30 for 33 in his first two years for the Wildcats, but he missed 10 of 47 field goal attempts in his final two years. Hoyland had two excellent, separate years going a combined 35 of 39 within the 2020 and 2022 seasons. The opposite three years told a really different story as he missed 15 of 53 attempts.
Within the offseason, each players have had good days and bad days, but reports seem to point that Hoyland has done enough to place himself in a legitimate kicking competition with the player on whom Baltimore used a draft pick. The Ravens are notorious for locating diamonds within the undrafted rough, having fielded undrafted rookies on their Week 1 roster in 20 of the past 21 seasons. Of this 12 months’s undrafted crop, Zrebiec gives Hoyland one of the best likelihood of creating the roster via his kicking competition with Loop.
91 percent of the made field goals in Ravens history have come off the leg of either Matt Stover (only drafted because drafts were 12 rounds in 1990) and Justin Tucker (undrafted). Despite the team finally using a draft pick on a kicker, there’s a likelihood they might turn to an undrafted leg yet again.