Tyler Loop on the Miss That Cost John Harbaugh His Job: ‘I Just Had to Accept It’

In the aftermath of a season that ended with a missed kick, a fired head coach, and a franchise rethinking its future, Tyler Loop is finally ready to talk about it. And he’s not hiding from anything.

The Baltimore Ravens kicker spoke with ESPN’s Jamison Hensley about the 42-yard field goal attempt that sailed wide, the one that effectively ended John Harbaugh’s 18-year tenure in Baltimore. The Ravens missed the playoffs. Harbaugh was fired. And Loop, a rookie, took the brunt of the blame.

“I would say the biggest thing I did was just acknowledge and accept it, and it took a day or two,” Loop said. “I would say moving on from the kick itself was pretty easy, just because I know you have to be ready for the next kick, and you have to be able to put it behind you.”

Easy might be an overstatement. That kick didn’t just cost a game. It cost a coach his job. Harbaugh already landed on his feet — he’s the new head coach of the New York Giants — but the moment still hangs over the Ravens like a fog that won’t lift.

The numbers tell a different story

Here’s the thing about Loop’s season. It was actually really good. He hit 30 of 34 field goals, an 88.2 percent clip, and 44 of 46 extra points. He was perfect from inside 50 yards until that one at the end of the year. His 134 points ranked seventh among all NFL kickers.

But none of that matters when your last swing is a miss that sends a franchise legend packing. That’s the brutal math of being a kicker in this league. You live and die by the last one, not the 30 that went through.

And it wasn’t just that kick. The Ravens had been wobbling for weeks. A loss to the New England Patriots a few weeks earlier basically ended their division title hopes. But Loop’s miss was the nail in a season that had already been hammered full of them.

What comes next for the Ravens

Baltimore is now trying to reset. The front office is searching for a new head coach, and Loop is still on the roster. He says he’s already moved on from the kick. The question is whether Baltimore has moved on from it too.

“You have to be ready for the next one,” Loop said. “You have to be able to put it behind you.”

The next one will come eventually. Maybe in Week 1. Maybe in a playoff game that actually matters. The Ravens still have a talented roster. They still have Lamar Jackson. But the Harbaugh era is over, and it ended on a kick that Loop will carry with him whether he wants to or not.

Harbaugh, meanwhile, is in New York now, trying to fix the Giants. And Loop is still in Baltimore, trying to prove that one miss doesn’t define him.

It doesn’t define Harbaugh either. But it changed the course of a franchise. And that’s not something you just shake off in a day or two.