This is too good a sports story not to share…

I don’t follow the Baltimore Ravens of the NFL, but their kicker, Justin Tucker, seems to be one of the best ever at his position, and, he’s a believer. After kicking the winning field goal with no time left a few weeks ago, his post-game interview has highlights of its own:

• He gave full credit to the guy who snapped the ball and the holder: “his first career game-winning hold.” Plus the blockers, of course.
• He acknowledged that he prays before each kick “Not for results, just for peace.”

He was later interviewed by Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal. His article is worth the read in its entirety. Here are some snippets:

But of course they wear his number in Baltimore. Tucker’s the MVF, Most Valuable Foot, central to the identity of his team and this city. That’s Tucker in commercials for the local convenience store heaven, Royal Farms. That’s Tucker, a trained bass-baritone opera singer, a music major at Texas, singing “Ave Maria” at the Baltimore Basilica over Christmas. [Note: the Ave Maria is fantastic – click on that!]

Did you catch Tucker’s generous postgame interview on TV, in which he nerded out about the pleasure of getting the football delivered with “12 o’clock laces” and deflected glory to Ravens snapper Nick Moore and rookie holder Jordan Stout? Tucker seemed to invent a new statistical category when he credited Stout with his “first career game-winning hold.”

“From there, I’m just a system kicker,” Tucker said. “The ball kicks itself at that point.”

Yeah, right. System kicker. Ball kicks itself. By almost every metric, Tucker’s the best there is, the best there’s ever been, already, at age 32. He’s a lifetime 98.9% on extra points, hovering over 91% on field goals, and that winner against the Bengals was his 61st successful fourth quarter or overtime kick in a row. Over his eleven seasons, he’s 17 for 17 on kicks in the final minute of regulation or OT. 

“The ball kicks itself” because Justin is disciplined. He trains. His skill is not accidental. Jason Gay goes on:

Sitting here at a table inside the Ravens practice facility, Tucker describes his methodical approach. Practice is a critical, offseason tinkering routine. In the “lab,” as he calls it, Tucker may tweak his approach. Once a modification is made, repetition is essential. It sounds dull. He loves it. 

“The Bruce Lee principle,” he says. “Practicing one kick 10,000 times, not just practicing kicking 10,000 times.”

The kick itself, Justin says, is 1.3 seconds:

One point three seconds. It’s a Tucker mantra, the time he says he needs, from snap to kick, to lock in and get it done.

Before and after those 1.3 seconds, Tucker allows himself to be human. All those edgy feelings you feel at home, watching a kicker get ready? Tucker thinks it’s healthy to feel those. “I’ll have all of the thoughts, from anxiety and fear to confidence, excitement, exhilaration, joy, celebration with my teammates and my coaches,” he says. “All of those feelings exist and they’re important. They need to be acknowledged.” “They can be put away for 1.3 seconds while I see the snap, see the hold and see the ball off my foot.” 

My son Mark observed that if each kick is just 1.3 seconds, all those field goals and extra points over his 11-year career amount to less than 20 minutes of kicking on the field. “Gotta be the job with the single biggest preparation-to-performance ratio in history.”

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. (1 Corinthians 9.24, 25, ESV)