Lose to a division rival on the road, beat one at home, get exposed in week three. Lose to a division rival on the road, beat one at home, get exposed in week three. This is the pattern the 2026 Dallas Cowboys are looking to avoid for a second straight year, but doing so would take beating the Baltimore Ravens for the first time since 2016 and just second time in franchise history.
Last year’s pattern went loss at the Eagles (also by one score), home win versus the Giants, and loss at the Chicago
Bears which is really where the defense showed they’d keep this team far from a playoff spot until the end.
The defense left plenty to clean up against the Washington Commanders in this year’s week two win, primarily containing a mobile quarterback when Jayden Daniels was in the game for the first half. Daniels exited down just 17-10, and in came Marcus Mariota who the Cowboys got close to but couldn’t bring to the ground.
Now comes Lamar Jackson in an international game in Brazil, and it will take another step up, or likely a big ol’ leap, from Christian Parker’s defense in a hurry to slow down Jackson.
Despite the location of this game being a wild card, the Ravens also come into it with a frighteningly similar pattern unfolding. The last time these teams met in 2024 was also in week three, and the Ravens were off an inexplicable home loss to the Gardner Minshew-led Raiders in week two.
The Ravens took some of this frustration out on the Cowboys, racing out to a 21-3 lead that reached 28-6 in the third quarter. The Cowboys did make a rally to put a scare into the Ravens, cutting the lead to 28-25 in the final three minutes, but this is as close as they’d get to fall to 1-2.
For this Sunday, the Ravens are also off a bit of a head-scratching home loss, this time to Kellen Moore and the Saints, and will go for win number three in a row against the Cowboys as a response. The Ravens are also 6-1 all time against the Cowboys.
Dallas has already lost to former Baltimore head coach John Harbaugh this season, and now they will match up against first-year HC Jesse Minter – still trying to find his own solution for how the Ravens have let so many close games slip away in similar fashion like they just did at home. The fans in Brazil should certainly get their money’s worth if this game remains undecided in the fourth quarter.
The Cowboys seeing Dak Prescott pour on points against a NFC East team in week two was nothing new. In fact, he now has 24 touchdowns to zero interceptions in eight career home games against the Commanders, all wins. Doing so against the Ravens will be a taller task, but assuming both quarterbacks play well for their respective 1-1 teams is where breaking down the other factors of this matchup gets fun.
According to ESPN metrics, this game will feature the widest possible disparity in run blocking win rates, and that doesn’t bode well for the Cowboys. They come in, still without Tyler Smith at left guard, in last place here while the Ravens are tied with their divisional rival the Bengals for first place.
The Cowboys can hope the Ravens make the same mistake they did against the Saints by forgetting about Derrick Henry on all of their crucial second half drives, but this feels unlikely for a few reasons.
In the last meeting of these sides, with the Ravens also coming off a bad loss like we mentioned, they ran the ball 45 times compared to just 15 passing attempts for Jackson. The Cowboys, playing in come-from-behind mode most of the afternoon, ran it just 16 times while asking Prescott to throw 51 attempts. Rico Dowdle led the Cowboys in carries with eight for 32 yards.
For this contest in Brazil, Declan Doyle is now the Ravens OC. Doyle was Ben Johnson’s OC last year, a game we also already mentioned as one where the Cowboys defense was shredded.
The Cowboys do have the best third-down conversion rate in the league so far this season, but also the worst third-down defense. This game has the type of feel where one short-yardage stop, or really any third-down stop of any kind, could be massive for momentum. If the Cowboys can match some of the Ravens intent to run the ball physically by doing so themselves, it would go a long way in avoiding a third straight 1-2 start.
The Saints managed to hold the ball for 5:30 more than the Ravens in last week’s game, while the Cowboys in their win actually lost time of possession by just under three minutes. If the Cowboys can combine these things and continue to make the splash plays that allow you to win while not possessing the ball as much, but also keep the Ravens offense off the field even a little bit, it would be impressive.
The feeling from week one that this Cowboys team doesn’t look or feel any different from so many recent ones has not gone away even after a 17-point win in Dallas. Ravens fans are likely saying the same thing about their teams’ early season struggles, and now the two outfits go head to head in Rio de Janeiro. This is a huge spot to learn about both Jesse Minter and Brian Schottenheimer’s teams with the second month of the season approaching.
