When Ravens kicker Justin Tucker was getting his leg loose Sunday at Ford Field, he kept coming up short from 65 yards. In both directions. "For whatever reason," he'd say later, "I just couldn’t get the ball to go."
For whatever reason, it usually goes for Tucker in Detroit. The last time the Ravens came here, in December of 2013, a 24-year-old Tucker lined one up from 61 yards away with under a minute to go and Baltimore trailing by one. And he knocked it through to lift the Ravens to an 18-16 win and break the Lions' hearts.
It usually goes for Tucker everywhere. Arguably the greatest kicker in NFL history, he's nailed more than 90 percent of his career field goals, including more than 40 from 50-plus yards. He's as automatic as automatic gets. So when the Ravens were on Detroit's 48-yard line Sunday, trailing by one with three seconds to play, John Harbaugh trotted out Tucker like he had eight years prior.
"Hey, he’s the best kicker in history," said Harbaugh. "When you have a kicker like that, you want to give him an opportunity like that."
Tucker lined it up from 66 yards away, two yards longer than the NFL record, drilled it with everything he had and bounced it off the cross bar and through to lift the Ravens to a 19-17 win and break the Lions' hearts.
"It’s like deja-vu all over again," Tucker said with a smile. "Man, I love Detroit. I’m thinking about getting a place here."
The Ravens flooded the field and mobbed their kicker. The Lions shook their heads, grasped their hearts and stared at the ground or looked to the sky or gazed into the distance. They tried not to think that it happened again, another gut-wrenching loss for a team that's been gutted every which way.
"About as big of a gut punch as I’ve ever been a part of," said Lions QB Jared Goff. "This team, this city has been through a lot, obviously, in recent years and has had these gut punches. For me personally, it’s the hardest one I’ve been a part of."
"I don’t even know how to describe it," said Dan Campbell. "I didn’t think (the ball) would make it."
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Tucker, for his part, knew he hit it well. He said "as soon as it left my foot I knew it had a chance." He said he sacrificed some technique, like landing on his kicking foot rather than his plant foot, "to gain a little power and use the adrenaline and the feeling of the moment to just get the ball to go." And it went a couple yards further than it had in warmups.
"I guess I found little something, a little divinely-inspired something to help that ball go exactly how far it needed to go, probably to the quarter of an inch," said Tucker.
At halftime Sunday, the Lions honored Calvin Johnson. It was his first time back at Ford Field since his final home game in 2015. Megatron wore his gold jacket and was presented with his Hall of Fame ring, and one day the Ravens will hold a similar ceremony for Tucker, precisely because of games like this one. How fitting that his teammates call him 'Legatron.'
"this is home to Megatron," said Ravens CB Marlon Humphrey, "but today Legatron came out and sealed the deal."
"For him to come through like that is just historic," said Harbaugh. "Someone came up to me on the sideline and said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before.’ And it came to me right away: because nobody has ever done anything like that before."
Only Tucker, right here in Detroit.