Kellen Moore had a weak response to Saints' Justin Tucker tryout

A bad kicker situation for the New Orleans Saints got worse when the team made plans to host Justin Tucker on a free agent tryout. The 36-year old ruined his reputation after a long run with the Baltimore Ravens after multiple Baltimore-area massage therapists, all women, alleged that he engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior earlier in his career. That led to an NFL investigation which found he violated the league's personal conduct policy, resulting in a 10-game suspension to start the 2025 season.

That's after Tucker looked like one of the worst kickers in the game the last time he was on the field. His field goal success rate fell to 73.3% last season, 30th in the league. With Blake Grupe struggling at 69.2% (which ranks 32nd this year), the Saints understandably chose to bring in a couple of free agents. What doesn't make sense is why Tucker is one of them. Even if you don't factor in the distracting baggage that comes with him, he just hasn't played well enough so late into his career to warrant a look from a 2-9 team. Not that head coach Kellen Moore got that memo.

“He’s been a really good kicker in this league for a really long time. And he's had a ton of success. And he's been a leader for Baltimore for a long time," Moore told reporters Monday. "He's been one of their leaders, for an extended period of time, with a very successful team. And so, obviously, there's been some stuff that's been unfortunate. He's gone through an experience and I think it's about collecting what that experience was. And we'll evaluate the football aspect of it, and we'll evaluate everything else as well.”

Some stuff. Unfortunate. And, hey, he was a leader. That's the best Moore could muster in describing a professional athlete who was accused of sexually harassment by 16 different women. His response could've used some more time in the oven. Moore declined to specify whether the Saints planned to contact any of Tucker's 16 accusers ("We'll do our due diligence as we go through that") or reach out to the Ravens for clarity on why they cut him ("We'll collect as much information as we can, absolutely"), but he did spend a lot of time repeating himself. He used some version of "evaluate" or "evaluating" 18 times over the course of his Monday press conference. Wasn't that what the bye week was for?

This article originally appeared on Saints Wire: Saints coach Kellen Moore offers weak take on Justin Tucker tryout