Justin Tucker arrived as an unforeseen salve just when the Baltimore Ravens needed him the most.

The 2011 team — balanced, star-studded, battle-weathered — was good enough to win the Super Bowl. Then Billy Cundiff’s 32-yard field goal attempt hooked left in the waning seconds of the AFC championship game.

It felt like a maddening end to Ray Lewis, Ed Reed and Joe Flacco’s quest to bring a second Lombardi Trophy to Baltimore.

Later that spring, though, as fans still reeled from the loss, a brash young man from Texas emerged. His obsessive devotion to craft matched the explosive power in his right leg.

Ravens officials were intrigued by his talent, but nobody could have foreseen what came next. Tucker won a heated training camp battle, then persevered through a tumultuous regular season. He hit every kick in the playoffs — including a 38-yard field goal that cemented victory in the Super Bowl.

Off the field, Tucker worked just as ardently to win fans. He spoke openly of his Catholic faith, performed opera and staged a romantic wedding proposal on the roof of the Four Seasons.

With Tucker’s star still rising, the Ravens faced the greatest crisis in their history in 2014, when running back Ray Rice was caught on film punching his future wife. Tucker emerged as a refreshing role model: driven, yet self-deprecating, charismatic, yet down-to-earth.

He was everything a Raven should be.

Kickers spend most of their careers on the sidelines, far from center stage. But Tucker proved to be a star. He kept hitting field goals, setting a new standard for his position — and becoming the league’s highest-paid kicker. His No. 9 jersey flew off the shelves and he became the ubiquitous pitchman for Royal Farms convenience stores. Only quarterback Lamar Jackson sparkled brighter in the team’s firmament.

Then, in January, that 13-year legacy began to unravel when 16 Baltimore-area massage therapists accused Tucker of inappropriate sexual behavior at eight spas and wellness centers around the region.

With an NFL investigation looming, the Ravens last week did what would have been unthinkable a year ago: They released the most accurate kicker in NFL history with three years left on his contract.

Just like that, the city that had adopted him — and a football-mad nation that marveled at his talent and humility — was left wondering: Who, really, is Justin Tucker?

Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker, left, celebrates his game-winning field goal with teammate Arthur Jones in a game against the New England Patriots in 2012.

Tucker’s path to Baltimore began in his native Texas, just a few days before the 2012 NFL draft. At that point, the plan was for Cundiff to put his playoff failure behind him and resume his place as Ravens kicker. But special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg traveled to Austin for a look at the Texas Longhorns kicker whose tape had caught his eye.

Despite playing for one of college football‘s most storied programs, Tucker, the son of an Austin cardiologist, had not been invited to the NFL scouting combine that year. But his confidence and charm jumped out during a lengthy interview, just as the ball jumped off his foot when Rosburg worked him out.

“We talked about general football and life stuff,” Tucker told ESPN in 2019. “I probably spilled the beans too much by referencing my burgeoning career as a rap artist over migas and Kerbey Lane Cafe queso. I’d been making beats and performing at a couple of functions here and there. At the end of the day, it didn’t totally scare him away. So that’s good.”

The Ravens weren’t about to use a precious draft pick on a kicker, so they invited Tucker to rookie minicamp for a longer look. When coach John Harbaugh wondered where they had found such a talent, Tucker quipped, “I was hiding at the University of Texas!”

Justin Tucker celebrates with his Texas Longhorns teammates after kicking the winning field goal as time expired in the second half of a game against the Texas A&M Aggies in 2011.

They signed him as a free agent two weeks later. Harbaugh encouraged him privately to go for Cundiff’s job, as if he had every chance to win it.

The Tucker-Cundiff battle became a leading story in training camp that summer, with beat writers tallying each kicker’s daily makes and misses. Specialists generally work off to the side, but star position players were watching; they noted Tucker’s moxie and the great distances from which he split the uprights. As the season neared, Harbaugh‘s choice was clear. He staked a veteran team’s fate on the leg of a 22-year-old upstart — overruling his coaches and medical team.

Even as a rookie, Tucker yearned to have his foot on the ball with the season on the line.

“That’s what’s fun,” he told The Baltimore Sun that December. “If you don’t want to be the kid to hit the walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth, you shouldn’t be playing baseball. If you don’t want that opportunity as a kicker, you shouldn’t be kicking the ball.”

Tucker quickly rewarded Harbaugh and Rosburg’s faith, missing just three field goals in the regular season and not at all in the postseason as the scorching Ravens rolled through four opponents. The team’s “Mile High Miracle” playoff victory in Denver is remembered for Flacco’s tying heave to Jacoby Jones, but Tucker’s 47-yard field goal in double overtime actually ended it.

From there, Tucker made field goals at a rate the NFL had never seen. He became the first kicker in league history to reach 400 career field goals within the first 13 years of a career, the first to have nine seasons with 30-plus field goals and the first with two go-ahead kicks from 60-plus yards in the final minute of regulation. By 2022, he was the Ravens’ all-time leading scorer.

Ravens kicker Justin Tucker celebrates with Tavon Young after kicking a 66-yard field goal in the second half of a game against the Detroit Lions in 2021.

“While you’re in the middle of a football season, in the middle of practice, lining up a kick, I’m not thinking about being legendary,” Tucker told The Athletic in 2019. “I’m thinking of making the most of whatever opportunity I have in front of me at that moment. At the end of the season or at the end of a career when you look back and reflect on the good times, the tough times and everything in between, I think it would be untrue if any of us didn’t want to look back on our careers and say, ‘I gave it everything I had and hopefully it’s enough to be considered one of the best to ever do whatever it is that each of us may be doing.’”

A decade into his career, Tucker was the widely acknowledged master of his craft. His masterpiece, an NFL-record 66-yarder to beat the Detroit Lions in 2021, was one of 65 straight field goals he made in the fourth quarter and overtime from 2016 to 2022, another NFL record. Following the field goal, The New York Times wrote that it was becoming hard to dispute that Tucker might be the greatest kicker of all time.

In a 2022 profile on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Tucker explained to reporter Jon Wertheim how he tried to strike specific dimples on the football, about an inch under its center, with the bone above his big toe.

“Since when have you heard this kind of swooning over a kicker?” Wertheim asked near the top of the segment.

Through it all, he proudly declared his allegiance to Baltimore, where he settled full-time and started a family with his wife, Amanda. He charmed fans by poking fun at himself in commercials and relentlessly deferring credit to his holder, Sam Koch, and his long snapper, Morgan Cox. (They dubbed their kicking battery “The Wolf Pack.”) He detested losing to the point that he’d slam his helmet to the ground after a miss in practice. Fellow Ravens teased him for his quirks, but to a man, they expressed confidence that he’d bail them out with clutch kicks no matter the distance or weather.

Justin Tucker with his wife, Amanda Bass, ahead of a game against the New York Jets in 2019.

Tucker signs autographs for young fans after the first day of the team’s 2024 Training Camp at the Under Armour Performance Center in Owings Mills.

He felt approachable in a way few Ravens stars ever have. Ray Lewis was all fire and brimstone. Joe Flacco was a steady everyman who rarely expanded on his feelings. Even Jackson keeps his personal life close to the vest.

Tucker felt like somebody fans actually knew. He kicked footballs in Patterson Park. He showed up to community events like the annual Holiday Helpers, where kids are treated to a shopping spree.

He was always available to reporters, whom he called by name, even after performances that would cause many of his teammates to hide in the showers. On bad days, he took blame, and on good days, he regaled the media with tales from the sidelines.

“The sky was gray green, kind of a light rain coming down sideways,” he said in 2023 following a game against the Rams when wide receiver Tylan Wallace returned a punt for a game-winning touchdown in overtime. “The light’s shining through, and you just see Tylan running down the sidelines. ... I lost all control of my body as I just ran down the field to celebrate.”

Tucker became everything all at once. The fan favorite. The greatest kicker of all time. The pitchman. Then, with startling quickness, it all changed.

“Nothing compares to the swiftness with which this occurred to a player who was so heralded,” said former longtime WJZ sports director Mark Viviano, who interviewed Tucker many times over the years. “I look at it as a sad story.”

Months before allegations of inappropriate behavior emerged, Tucker, the team’s enduring sure thing, didn’t seem so infallible anymore. Each errant kick last year (eight in 30 regular-season field goal attempts) rattled nerves and sparked debate about where his technique and confidence had gone awry.

Tucker acknowledged the growing strain as he tried to answer for each kick that hooked wide left.

“As simply as I can put it, I missed the kicks, and I’ll leave it at that,” Tucker told reporters after a Week 13 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in which his field goal accuracy for the season fell to a career-worst 70.4%. “I feel like I cost us this one, but it doesn’t really do anybody any good to dwell on it. The only thing that we can do — that I can do — is just continue to work, move forward, take it one kick at a time.

“I hate that I’ve had to have this same conversation over the course of this season, but that’s something that comes with the territory in this job description.”

Tucker reacts after missing a field goal attempt during a game against the Philadelphia Eagles in 2024.

Harbaugh, however, remained steadfast in his faith that Tucker could turn it around. Even when he acknowledged the team would “turn over every stone” to solve the team’s kicking issue, he maintained that Tucker was the best option out there.

Tucker did not miss over the last six weeks of the season, reclaiming the NFL‘s all-time mark for kicking accuracy (89.1%). When Harbaugh and general manager Eric DeCosta spoke with reporters after the Ravens’ playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills, they gave every indication Tucker would be their kicker in 2025.

The team responded cautiously to The Banner’s reports detailing Tucker’s alleged misconduct with massage therapists between 2012 and 2016, the same years his star rose in Baltimore. Crisis management experts said their silence was not surprising, given the NFL‘s unfolding investigation.

But by the time Harbaugh and DeCosta spoke at the combine in late February, they acknowledged the real possibility that they would draft Tucker’s potential replacement.

The search for new blood was hastened by the possibility Tucker might face an NFL suspension in 2025 for violating the league’s personal conduct policy.

Regardless, they felt compelled to act. For the first time in the team’s history, they used a draft pick on a kicker, tapping Tyler Loop, who now faces the pressure of stepping in for the most consistent and powerful kicker in football history.

Ravens rookie kicker Tyler Loop warms up before kicking at mini-camp in Owings Mills earlier this month.

A week later, the Ravens released him. They did not wait for the NFL‘s investigation to conclude. DeCosta called it an “incredibly difficult” football decision, lauding the seven-time Pro Bowl kicker’s “reliability, focus, drive, resilience and extraordinary talent.”

There was no mention of the allegations, which Tucker has called “unequivocally false.”

Until a few months ago, Tucker was regarded as a lock for the Ravens’ Ring of Honor and a likely candidate to join the tiny cadre of kickers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Broadcaster Scott Garceau, who has long served as the Baltimore representative on the Hall of Fame selection committee, said Tucker’s case might be murkier because of the allegations (even though voters are instructed to only consider on-field performance.)

“Let’s see what happens,” Garceau said. “It’s a really hot-button topic in our town today, because of the news that he’s done with the Ravens. But what’s the feeling going to be nine years from now? Does it kind of go away?”

Tucker’s future relationship with the Ravens and Baltimore fans is even more difficult to predict. Even Rice, who was released by the team in 2014 after TMZ posted the now infamous video of him hitting his now-wife, eventually returned to M&T Bank Stadium as a “Legend of the Game.”

“I can’t even begin to say how that might work for Justin, but I hope it goes in a manner similar to what Ray Rice did,” Viviano said. “Because, listen, we all stumble. We all fall. And we all have to get up. And we all have to make the most of the time that we have. If that means atonement or seeking forgiveness, whatever it is, I hope that’s what happens for Justin.”

Banner reporters Giana Han and Jonas Shaffer contributed to this article.