On the third day of this year’s draft, the Ravens drafted a kicker for the first time in their 30-year history, taking Arizona’s Tyler Loop with the 186th pick. Despite getting undercut by the Patriots, who took the first kicker of the draft four picks earlier, the Ravens insisted that Loop was always their intended target. According to Jeff Zrebiec of The Athletic, though, Loop’s path to the 53-man roster will not be unchallenged.
At the conclusion of the Ravens’ Organized Team Activities and mandatory minicamp, Zrebiec listed a number 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 were multiple reports of days in which he struggled with both consistency and accuracy from distance.
Per Zrebiec, Loop is making some changes to his technique and kicking motions at the behest of the team’s senior special teams coach, Randy Brown. While that may 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 the most accurate kicker in NFL history, but playing for a perennial playoff contender, pressure is something Loop is going to have to deal with.
There’s added pressure on Loop from some competition that the Ravens brought in shortly after the draft. One of the team’s undrafted free agents this year was Wyoming kicker John Hoyland. Neither kicker was very accurate during their collegiate years. Loop started 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 in the 2020 and 2022 seasons. The other three years told a very different story as he missed 15 of 53 attempts.
In the offseason, both players have had good days and bad days, but reports seem to indicate that Hoyland has done enough to put himself in a legitimate kicking competition with the player on whom Baltimore used a draft pick. The Ravens are notorious for finding diamonds in the undrafted rough, having fielded undrafted rookies on their Week 1 roster in 20 of the past 21 seasons. Of this year’s undrafted crop, Zrebiec gives Hoyland the best chance of making 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 chance they may turn to an undrafted leg yet again.