I started my day reading The Sun’s coverage of yesterday’s loss to the Vikings already knowing what to expect. One of the columns was titled “No Stover? Ravens should kick themselves” by our favorite writer, Mike Preston.
In the past, with two seconds left in the game, most Ravens fans would have gone to the refrigerator, popped a brew and gone outside to celebrate victory.
Instead, the Ravens are coming off one of their most demoralizing losses ever, falling to the Minnesota Vikings, 33-31, Sunday, as Steve Hauschka’s44-yard field goal with no time remaining went wide left.
Deep down inside, it was one of our worst nightmares. Where was Matt Stover? Answer: Probably depositing his Indianapolis Colts paycheck into the bank.
As angry as I was yesterday with this loss, I’m not about to pin it on this kid and once again hold Stover over his head. Now look, I’ll be the first to admit that a kicker on this team, this year, is going to be in a position to win or lose 4-5 games. We saw it in San Diego and again yesterday in Minnesota. Are you taking a risk putting a second year kicker out there in these situations…of course you are. The concern now is most certainly that he bounce back and puts this miss out of his head. It was a bad snap and Koch did his best to reset the ball to center but it was definitely a manageable kick.
To inject a little bit of reality into Preston’s ripping of the team for not bringing Stover back, I pulled Matt’s kicks from the past few years between 40-49 yards (Hauschka’s miss was from 44 yards).
2007/08 Season
Week 2 vs Jets 1/2
Week 3 vs Arizona – 2/2
Week 4 vs Cleveland – 0/2
Week 5 vs San Fransisco – 1/1
Week 6 vs St. Louis – 2/2
Week 11 vs Cleveland – 2/2
Week 15 vs Miami – 0/1
Season Total 8/12
2008/09 Season
Week 1 vs Cincy – 0/1
Week 3 vs Cleveland – 0/1
Week 5 vs Tennessee – 0/1
Week 7 vs Miami – 1/1
Week 9 vs Cleveland – 1/1
Week 12 vs Philadelphia – 2/2
Week 17 vs Jacksonville – 1/2
Season Total – 5/9
While having Stover around is the easy thing to say after a game altering miss, the numbers don’t support it. I know there is a “clutch” factor involved that needs to be mentioned but the numbers don’t lie. Stover hit 66% in 07/08 and 55% last year in this range. For the sake adding a little more data, he made 86% in 06/07 and 78% in 05/06. Not a total downward trend but convincing enough for me to say that the leg strength is not there anymore. I wish Matt all the luck in the world with the Colts (within reason of course) but the fact is, he is not a good fit for this team anymore and it’s time we moved on.
I agree lee we cut matt stover for a reason.
The easy thing to say, because for a lot of games he WAS the Ravens offense, is “Stover woulda made it.” According to your research, it isn’t necessarily so. Besides, if the defense could have come up with a few more stops, it doesn’t come down to a kick to win at the end.