Ravens @ Cowboys

Tyler Loop's 56-yard walk-off with one second left: the ninth tied-game field goal of 56 or more yards to win in the final five seconds since 1999

Brandon Aubrey's 23-yard field goal tied it at 31 with 10 seconds left. Baltimore took a touchback, Lamar Jackson hit Zay Flowers over the middle for 27 yards to the Dallas 38 with 7 seconds left, and Loop made it from 56 at 0:01. The kick was worth a 27.1 point swing in win probability, the largest single play of the game. Since 1999, a kicker has won a tied game with a made field goal of 56 or more yards inside the final five seconds of regulation nine times, and only Jake Elliott's 61-yarder in 2017 also came with a single second on the clock.

Loop's longest made kick as a rookie in 2025 was 52 yards, on 30 of 34 attempts. Three weeks into 2026 he has made a 57 and a 56, the second of them to win a game. Dallas has been on both ends of this list: Greg Zuerlein won a game for the Cowboys from 56 in 2021.

Why it matters. A 56-yard kick at the end of a tied game is close to the edge of a kicker's range, and the play before it is what made the distance manageable: without the 27-yard completion Baltimore would have been near midfield with no realistic attempt. Nine such kicks in 28 seasons puts this in the rarest few tenths of a percent of game endings. It also turned what looked like an overtime coin flip into a regulation win.

Three scoring plays in the final 94 seconds, by both teams. Ten games since 1999 have ended that way, and Dallas has been in five of them.

Matthew Hibner's touchdown put Baltimore ahead with 1:34 left. Dak Prescott then took Dallas from its own 35 to the Baltimore 5 in eight snaps and 80 seconds, helped by a pass interference call that put the ball at the Baltimore 22, and Aubrey tied it. Baltimore needed two plays to answer. Games with three or more scoring plays in the final two minutes are about one in 90 since 1999; requiring both teams to score inside the last 100 seconds trims the list to ten, and the Cowboys have been in half of them, including the 2016 Divisional loss to Green Bay and last season's 40-37 win over the Giants.

Why it matters. A lead change with 94 seconds left is usually the last score, because the trailing team needs a full-field drive against a defense playing the clock. Dallas got the tying drive done in 80 seconds, which should have sent the game to overtime, and Baltimore then needed just one completion to be in range. The Cowboys' presence in five of these ten games is a real pattern across three coaching staffs: their games keep getting decided by the final possession.

Dallas led 10-0, Baltimore led 24-13, Dallas led 28-24. Both teams holding a double-digit lead happens in about one regular-season game in 27.

Dallas's largest lead was 10, at 10-0 late in the first quarter. Baltimore's was 11, at 24-13 with 3:50 left in the third. The lead changed hands three times, at 14-10, 28-24 and 31-28, and the game was tied once more at 31 before the winning kick. Dallas's two-point conversion after the Ferguson touchdown is what kept it a one-score game, and the blocked 59-yard attempt at 17-13 is the three points Dallas ended up short by.

Why it matters. Most games with a double-digit lead on each side are shootouts where neither defense can get a stop, and that is close to what happened here: both offenses finished above 0.10 EPA per play and neither punted more than three times. The blocked kick is the quiet inflection. Dallas was down four at the time, a make would have made it 17-16, and the final margin was exactly three. Eight of last season's 272 regular-season games saw both teams lead by 10, so this shape is rare but not unheard of.

Derrick Henry: 26 carries, 89 yards, minus 10.8 EPA. Every other Baltimore run: 12 carries, 103 yards, plus 6.7.

Henry scored both of Baltimore's first-quarter and second-quarter touchdowns from inside the 5, and still finished as the only Baltimore rusher with a negative expected-points total. Six of his carries came with two yards or fewer to go, and none of them gained the distance. Two of those were fourth-and-1 stops, one at the Dallas 1 with Baltimore up 24-21 in the fourth quarter. In the 2024 meeting he ran 25 times for 151 yards and two scores against the Cowboys.

Why it matters. Short-yardage failures are the most expensive plays a running back can have: a fourth-and-1 stop at the 1 costs about 4.5 expected points on its own, which is why Henry's day reads as minus 10.8 despite two touchdowns. The runs that actually moved Baltimore were Jackson's scrambles and a Flowers end-around, at 8.6 yards a carry across the twelve non-Henry attempts. One game does not change what Henry is, but it does show how much of Baltimore's ground game now runs through the quarterback when the defense sells out on the back.

Dallas gained 417 yards and 25 first downs with one giveaway. Teams with that line have lost 92 times in 633 tries since 1999.

Prescott went 25 of 41 for 278 yards, CeeDee Lamb caught 7 of 9 targets for 112 and George Pickens 7 of 11 for 82, and Dallas ran 14 more plays than Baltimore. The one giveaway was Jake Ferguson's fumble at the Baltimore 24 with Dallas trailing 17-13 in the third quarter, a play worth minus 5.6 expected points. Add the blocked 59-yard field goal on the next Dallas possession and those two empty trips in Baltimore territory add up to more than the final margin.

Why it matters. Yardage and first downs measure how often an offense moved the chains, not how often it finished, and Dallas's two empty possessions both came in scoring territory in the same quarter. Baltimore was also more efficient per snap at 6.52 yards to 5.79, which is why Dallas needed 14 extra plays to outgain them by 39. Roughly one team in seven with this stat line loses, so it is unusual but not a fluke: it is what happens when the other offense has no punts-and-turnovers problem of its own.

Baltimore is 7-1 against Dallas all time, and the last two meetings were both three-point Ravens wins in Week 3 with the Cowboys as the home team.

Dallas's only win in the series came in 2016. The 2024 game was at AT&T Stadium with John Harbaugh and Mike McCarthy on the sidelines; this one was at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro with Jesse Minter, in his first season as Baltimore's head coach, against Brian Schottenheimer, and it is the first game in the database listed at that stadium. Dallas was the designated home team roughly 5,000 miles from Texas.

Why it matters. A 7-1 series record over 26 years is lopsided for two teams that meet only once every four years, and the last two results say the gap has narrowed to a field goal each time. The venue removes the usual home-field read: Dallas kept the home designation, but both teams flew to Rio, so neither crowd nor travel explains the result. Baltimore left Brazil a game over .500 and Dallas a game under.