Cowboys 31-34 Ravens: a 56-yard dagger ends the NFL's first night in Rio
Tyler Loop's field goal at the gun — set up by a Dallas kickoff decision that backfired — gave Baltimore an instant classic in the NFL's inaugural Rio de Janeiro game.
The NFL's first-ever game in Rio de Janeiro got an ending worthy of the occasion. With the score tied at 31 and seven seconds left, Lamar Jackson hit Zay Flowers over the middle for 27 yards, called timeout with one second on the clock, and watched Tyler Loop drill a 56-yard field goal as time expired to beat the Cowboys 34-31 on Sunday.
The decision that decided it
The winning drive should arguably never have happened. According to CBS Sports, Dallas kicker Brandon Aubrey boomed a touchback on the final kickoff rather than forcing a return — handing Baltimore the ball at its own 35 with those seven seconds intact under the current kickoff rule. That was all the runway Jackson needed. Ravens head coach Jesse Minter said afterward the math was simple: "we really only needed 18-plus yards to get to our end-of-game type of range."
How it unfolded
Dallas struck first and led 10-0 before Derrick Henry punched in touchdowns from 4 and 3 yards out, and Baltimore took a 17-10 lead into halftime. Jackson found Chris Moore for a 4-yard score to make it 24-13 in the third quarter, but the Cowboys stormed back in the fourth — KaVontae Turpin scored during a surge that briefly put Dallas in front — before Matthew Hibner's 2-yard touchdown catch drew the Ravens level at 31 and set up the finish.
Jackson, per WMAR, never blinked: "I had no doubt in my mind... I feel like we already won."
What it means
Baltimore leaves Brazil at 2-1, having avoided the kind of early-season hole that haunted its playoff seeding a year ago. Brian Schottenheimer's Cowboys fall to 1-2 with a loss that will sting less for the scoreboard than for the sequencing — one kickoff call turned a likely overtime into a defeat, an echo of the "13 seconds" clock-management collapses the league still talks about.