Ravens punter Jordan Stout was at his locker, ready. He’d been anticipating questions after kicker Justin Tucker’s two missed field goals against Pittsburgh on Sunday.

He’s seen the conversations breaking down his holds, speculating they might be the root of why Tucker, one of the greatest kickers of all time, is suddenly unreliable.

He’s heard Tucker’s defense of his and long snapper Nick Moore’s part in the field goal operations. He expected that of Tucker — “We work as a unit. There’s never going to be one person singled out; that’s just how we are,” Stout said — but everyone else expects Tucker to defend his teammates, too.

And Stout has felt the disappointment and frustration of the missed field goals as keenly as if he were the one kicking the ball and missing the uprights — “When he misses, I miss, too.”

Through the process, Stout has learned the hard way that “nobody’s perfect,” but his confidence in Tucker has remained strong.

“He’s gonna come out of this, and he’s gonna be 100 times the person and the specialist kicker that he was before,” Stout said.

There’s no one more invested in fixing whatever is wrong — and it’s not the unfixable element of age because Tucker is still generating the power he needs — than Tucker, Stout and Moore. They’ve gone through the operation countless times. On Thursday, Stout took The Baltimore Banner through the process, as well.

Special teams tradition

Stout joined the team as a rare drafted punter in 2022 (since 1997, about two punters have been drafted per year, according to the New York Times). He succeeded Pro Bowl punter Sam Koch, a holder who preceded Tucker.

Former Ravens special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg called Koch the “best holder in the history of football” and said his efforts factored into Matt Stover and Tucker’s success. Koch stuck around as part of the Ravens coaching staff, and Stout has benefited from that. As of 2024, senior special teams coach Randy Brown was pleased with how far Stout’s come.

“You’re Jordan Stout, and you’re following Sam Koch, who’s arguably the greatest holder that’s ever played the game,” Brown said during training camp. “So Jordan has now had a chance to learn from Sam and learn from Justin. So, I would say, today, Jordan is the best holder in the National Football League.”

Three months later, after a series of disappointing misses by Tucker, social media personalities and social media analysts have called that into question. The most notable one, Isaac Parks, was a Division II first-team All-America punter, and he points out that the snap and placement of the ball seemed to be a little off on all the misses. Tucker’s completion percentage also took a notable drop in 2022, which makes it easy for people to claim Stout is the problem.

The fingers aren’t being pointed only at Stout (even Parks said not to be too hasty in blaming him). They’ve been pointed at the entire unit, including the blocking, snapping and coaching. Moore, for example, missed an entire year after he tore his Achilles, although he said he and Stout started working in February to get their chemistry back. Stout said they practice their routine hundreds of times a day.

“We tend to work on all aspects of our operation,” Tucker said. “... Even on those days where we’re not having a quote-unquote heavy workload, we still make it a point to just get together and kind of talk through our process and stay dialed in.”

The right spot

This season’s slump has cost Tucker the title of most accurate kicker in NFL history. However, he has made 411 career field goals. New No. 1 Eddy Piñeiro has made fewer than one-fourth of that.

Tucker demands the ball be placed at the exact spot he wants it, Brown said. Stout thinks of it as placing the ball on an imaginary grain of rice.

When the field goal unit takes the field, Stout kneels and places his hand on the ground where he wants the ball to land while Tucker does his steps back and to the left.

“He looks at me; he gives a nod,” Stout said. “... And then I do the cadence. And Nick is watching my hand, and when I open it, that’s when he knows.”

They have their timing down so well that Moore is already snapping the ball before Stout fully opens his hand.

“Then I catch the ball when I have it in the cup of my hands,” Stout said. “And then I put it down as fast as I can.”

That’s when he aims for the grain of rice. Obviously, he doesn’t land on the spot every time because that would be impossible, he said, but perfection is what they’re striving for.

Even the grain-of-rice description doesn’t convey just how complicated it is. Stout also has to place it with the correct angle.

Tucker’s preferred angle has changed over the years. Stout’s first year, Tucker liked for the ball to be more upright, but he has gradually asked for it to lean more so the “sweet spot opens up.” Right now, Tucker prefers for the ball to be placed with the bottom tip pointed slightly toward Stout.

“If you’re looking at it like a clock, and 12 o’clock is straight up, and you’re going clockwise towards me, you almost want the ball at around 12:45 or 1 o’clock,” Stout said.

That can change depending on the weather, he said, which goes along with what Tucker has been repeating about every attempt being its own kick. Tucker said Wednesday that they changed their aim point on the 54-yard field goal he made against Pittsburgh, but that the adjustment won’t necessarily work for other kicks.

What Stout pointed out that Tucker has refrained from saying is that Tucker’s far from the only kicker who has been missing more kicks and missing wide left.

CBS Sports did a deep dive into whether the perception that kickers are missing more is true and found that the overall field goal percentage has not significantly dipped in the last five years. However, the percentage around the league for 40- to 49-yard field goals has dropped from 79.6% last year to 76.9% this year, which is the lowest in the last five years.

And, of the 90 missed kicks (not blocked) this year, 42 have been missed wide left.

“It’s kind of weird. Because Justin doesn’t just miss left. Jake Elliott doesn’t just miss left. Evan McPherson doesn’t just miss left,” Stout said. “All these guys are missing left consistently.”

What’s also weird is it’s not happening in practice, only in games.

“It kind of looks like there’s something that could be wrong with the footballs, but at the same time, it’s our job to adjust for that, and since we know that, then we need to aim more right or just adjust in situations,” Stout said. “I think that’s what we’re kind of working towards.”

Like Tucker, Stout did not place the blame solely on one factor but on the group as a whole. As coach John Harbaugh said, Tucker is just one factor. So is Stout. This is a problem they plan to “attack [with] everything to the utmost that we can, across the board.” All in the name of one goal that seemed so simple for years.

“All we’re doing now is trying to make kicks,” Stout said.