PITTSBURGH — Intentional or not, it felt like a farewell.

Tyler Loop took a few silent moments in a black hat and black clothes, his hands folded as he stared between his cubby’s wooden walls. For a few more minutes, he was spirited away by the Ravens PR staff to a back room of the visiting locker room, presumably to figure out what to say after one of the most devastating missed kicks (not the most, but certainly up there) in franchise history.

When he reemerged, snapper Nick Moore and punter Jordan Stout stood behind him at each shoulder — an image meant to project team unity and strength. Indeed, the 24-year-old put on a brave face as he soldiered through what was undoubtedly the worst night of his football career.

“I love this team, and I love these guys, and I wish it ended different,” Loop said. “I’m just super blessed to be here, and it’s been one of the most amazing experiences being kicker for the Ravens.”

It’s not out of the question that a 44-yard miss that lost the game for the Ravens in a 26-24 season finale is the last kick Loop attempts for Baltimore. After all, Billy Cundiff never suited up for the Ravens again.

If anything, the scene emphasized just how young Loop is. With his veteran teammates flanking him, the 5-foot-11 Loop looked even smaller by comparison. He fidgeted with his sleeves, which were pulled over his hands.

Loop looked like a kid. And when the night called for him — when he finally got the first chance of his Baltimore tenure for a game-winner — his wide-right clunker showed how difficult, maybe even impossible, it is to grow into huge shoes in just one year.

The Ravens tried to replace one of the greatest kickers of all time — Justin Tucker, whose spectacular rise was matched only by his spectacular fall — with a rookie. In retrospect, this endeavor was always hubris.

Tyler Loop was not ready to shoulder that burden. But was there anyone who could have? Probably not.

You start with the setting: Acrisure Stadium, a notorious place to kick with the winds swirling right at the intersection of three great rivers. Even steady veteran kickers are laid low here — in 2024, Tucker missed two of three, either one of which would have won the Ravens the game.

If Loop had made his kick, Pittsburgh kicker Chris Boswell would have taken the Steelers’ loss on the chin for missing the extra point on the final touchdown of the game. And he kicks here all the time.

But, even though the winds were nearly dead in the Sunday night frosty air, the Terrible Towels twirled in the air, “Renegade” blared, a crowd of hungry Yinzers lustily screamed for Loop to shank it. Even during warmups, Loop looked shaky, missing back-to-back 60-yard attempts short and to the left, respectively.

Before the game, a priest allegedly blessed the north end zone where Loop later missed his kick. Even without the sprinkling of holy water, Loop must have felt as if the heavens were aligned against him.

“He didn’t have an opportunity all year to have a game-winner,” said Stout, who held the snap. “For the first one to come when it’s 20 degrees out, and you’re in enemy territory, with the Terrible Towel swirling around, you know, it’s not easy. It’s not easy at all.”

Very few people will know the pressure of trying to deliver in that moment. Even fewer could understand trying to take yourself out of the shadow of the guy who was known around Baltimore for game-winning kicks.

The Ravens tried to remove Loop from the specter of Tucker as much as possible. They cut Tucker in May, just weeks after drafting Loop. They had a “competition” but pulled the plug on undrafted rookie John Hoyland quickly.

The messaging was that Loop was their guy, the cream of the 2025 rookie class who had the biggest leg and the biggest potential. The Ravens touted the way senior special teams coach Randy Brown traversed the country evaluating prospects, and Loop was the one who stuck out.

“I texted John [Harbaugh] afterward,” Brown told The Banner this summer. “I said, ‘I think we have our guy.’”

In retrospect, all the rigamarole feels like theater, meant to make Loop seem anointed as the next in line: from Matt Stover to Tucker to Loop-There-It-Is.

But all of that could not hide the uncomfortable truth: No matter who the next kicker was, it was always going to be difficult (for many reasons) to move on from Tucker.

It’s not for a lack of professionalism from Loop’s teammates. Moore and Stout have backed him from beginning to end. Loop made 30 of his 34 kicks this season (his three previous misses were all from 50-plus yards). Although he struggled with kickoff penalties, his fellow specialists were in his corner.

“Tyler’s his own man, and we’ve moved on to him,” Moore said. “Obviously, Justin was a great kicker for a long time. And I know a lot of people like to bring that in as if it’s the boogeyman in the background, but it’s not. And Tyler wasn’t — we weren’t ever focused on that.”

Whether Tucker was on Loop’s mind or not, it was on the minds of Ravens fans who took big kicks for granted for a decade or more. Unfortunately, some of them took to social media to leave ugly comments on one of Loop’s Instagram posts with his fiancée.

Some fans don’t handle defeat with the grace their kickers do, even if they should.

It’s always hard to step into the shoes of the greats, and even Tucker’s ugly 2024 season on his way out hasn’t diminished the high standard for special teams play in Baltimore. Moore just signed a contract extension. After an amazing contract year, Stout seems likely to get offered one next.

Right now, Loop is the odd man out.

It’s not fair. It’s especially not fair because the allegations of inappropriate behavior that led to Tucker’s eventual ouster from the league have left a cloud of possibility hanging — if he hadn’t acted in such untoward ways toward massage therapists, perhaps in some parallel universe the Ravens would still have their special teams ace.

In my opinion, that’s another sore spot to add to Tucker’s tab. He’s never apologized for his behavior (even though the NFL investigated the claims and suspended him), and ultimately he’s the one responsible for his not being in the NFL.

One of the people who has to deal with that legacy is Loop — not by choice but simply because the Ravens picked him to try to replace one of the greatest kickers of all time.

Stout implied that Loop could one day be one of the NFL’s best himself, given another chance.

“They’re gonna make a movie about him one day,” Stout said. “You know, no one should have to start out their rookie year like this. … Ten years down the line, when he’s the best in the league, I think he’ll look back on it as the moment that made him.”

Loop, too, was thinking ahead. After all, there’s nowhere else to look.

“It’s disappointing, and it sucks,” he said. “But the nature of the job is I gotta move on and I gotta get ready for the next kick.”

Unfortunately for Loop, it’s less about whether he moves on but a matter of whether the Ravens decide to move on from him. The more distance this franchise can get from Tucker, the easier this process will become. And Loop showed enough flaws to warrant bringing in real competition this offseason.

It’s not strictly Loop’s fault. Someone was always going to be next. And, no matter who that kicker was, a shadow was always going to be hanging over him, making one of the NFL’s highest-pressure jobs even harder.