Maracana Stadium Walk-Off Seals Ravens' Win Over Cowboys

Tyler Loop's fifty-six-yard field goal sailed through the uprights as time expired on Sunday, giving the Baltimore Ravens a 34-31 win over the Dallas Cowboys at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. It was the NFL's third game in Brazil and its first in Rio, the first American football game ever played at Maracana Stadium, and it delivered a fitting classic: a back-and-forth thriller decided on the final play before an announced crowd of just under seventy-three thousand. The ending could hardly have been scripted better.

A finish built for the Maracana

The closing minutes kept changing hands. Lamar Jackson found Matthew Hibner for a two-yard touchdown with ninety seconds remaining to put Baltimore ahead by three, and Dallas answered when Brandon Aubrey drilled a twenty-three-yard field goal with seven seconds left to tie it. Jackson then completed a twenty-seven-yard pass to Zay Flowers and called a timeout with one second on the clock, setting up Loop for the winner. He calmly sent it through with room to spare, then sprinted downfield as Jackson chased him down for a bear hug.

Loop marked the moment with Cristiano Ronaldo's trademark "Siu" celebration, and the Rio crowd shouted it back at him. He said teammate Ryan Eckley had suggested a soccer-style knee slide after a big kick, but the "Siu" felt right for the Maracana. He also revealed that with about three minutes left, teammate Nick Moore had told him the team was about to do something epic to win the game, and he credited his blockers for giving him the chance to do his job.

The kick carried extra weight because of how last season ended for the second-year kicker. Loop missed a forty-four-yard attempt in the finale that would have sent Baltimore to the playoffs, and the Ravens fell to Pittsburgh in a two-point loss that ended their season. Coach John Harbaugh was fired in the aftermath, ending an eighteen-year run with the franchise.

Given another chance with the game on the line in Rio, the twenty-five-year-old, who played in college at Arizona, did not blink. Jackson said he had no doubt on the sideline, telling the young kicker his legacy was starting in that moment, in Brazil. Loop was carried off the field on his teammates' shoulders, theScore reported, a very different exit from the lonely walk after last season's miss.

The field held up

The turf at Maracana Stadium was a storyline for almost two weeks before kickoff. The natural grass was in poor shape seven days out amid a long soccer season, with local clubs Flamengo and Fluminense playing there at least once a week, and concerns about traction prompted the NFL to reinforce its stitching throughout the week. Hours before the game, after the executive director of the NFL Players Association said the league and the union had experts monitoring conditions, stadium workers were still out with mowers and scissors.

The footing at Maracana Stadium held: there was minimal slipping, players and coaches called it a nonfactor afterward, and even the patch of grass under the halftime stage survived, according to the Associated Press. The two teams combined for nearly eight hundred yards of offense, and not even a halftime show featuring Ricky Martin and Brazilian pop star Pedro Sampaio left a mark.

It was a far smoother debut than Brazil's first NFL game, when Philadelphia and Green Bay players had to change cleats to stop slipping at NeoQuimica Arena in Sao Paulo. The league has played in Brazil since 2024, and Sunday was its third game in the country. Jackson finished with two touchdown passes, no interceptions and fifty rushing yards; Derrick Henry ground out eighty-nine yards on twenty-six carries with two scores; and Flowers led the Ravens with five catches for eighty-four yards. The win moved Baltimore to two and one on the young season, in another wild Week 3 around the league. Elsewhere, Marcus Mariota threw three touchdown passes while starting in place of the injured Jayden Daniels, leading Washington past the defending champion Seahawks by two points, Reuters reported.

A new bar for games abroad

The NFL has spent two decades taking regular-season games overseas, and USA Today columnist Nate Davis called the Rio thriller arguably the best international game of that entire experiment. For the latest on the rest of the league's quarterback news, read about the Giants' quarterback situation.