A ‘Pure Vibes’ kick; Justin Tucker shares he broke a ‘written-in-stone principle’ on his 56-yarder

Baltimore Ravens senior special teams coach Randy Brown is a crucial member of the Ravens’ field goal unit. His guidance has helped lead kicker Justin Tucker to becoming the most accurate field goal kicker in NFL history. And one of Brown’s “written-in-stone” principles is, “Do not give the uprights away.” But against the Cincinnati Bengals, Tucker, who has been critiqued this season for his struggles from 50-plus yards, strayed from gospel on his 56-yard field goal attempt and went off “pure vibes.”

“Sometimes, you have to just go just based on pure vibes and just hammer the ball and see what happens, and that’s exactly what we did,” Tucker said. “Nick [Moore] threw back 12 o’clock laces, Jordan [Stout] put the ball down super quickly and clean and smooth and then it gave me the opportunity to just lay away into the ball and let the —I wouldn’t even say breeze— just let the wind carry the ball back within the framework of the upright. ... 100% That was pure vibes.”

The wind was the reason for abandoning the kicking commandment as the flags atop the uprights were horizontal for Tucker’s kick from the logo and Tucker could feel the wind’s strength on the ground.

“Normally, [the target line] would be something like a letter or the edge of a letter on the scoreboard or on the Jumbotron and on this particular kick, we lined it up and you just can kind of feel — if you can feel the wind on the field level, you have to know up 20 or 30 feet, or however high the apex of the ball flight is going to be, it’s going to be blowing significantly faster up there,” Tucker said.

The “pure vibes” had Tucker aiming that the upward arc of the kick was a yard or two wide of the uprights before being caught by the whipping wind and sailing back to split the uprights.

And as the ball fell from the apex, his teammates knew it was good, with Moore, Patrick Mekari and Charlie Kolar all celebrating long before it was official.

And while the kick was good and the game was won, in large part due to Tucker’s 56-yard field goal, he did apologize to Brown for his pure vibes decision.

“Randy, I’m sorry. I did kind of bail on one of your most important coaching points for that particular kick,” Tucker said. “But I think it’s one of those all’s well that ends well type of things.”