As Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs sliced through the Ravens defense, Pro Bowl linebackers Kyle Van Noy and Roquan Smith watched helplessly on the sideline, two of six defensive starters who were out because of injury.
By the fourth quarter, quarterback Lamar Jackson and cornerback Nate Wiggins had joined the list of wounded, and the Ravens hobbled out of Kansas City with an embarrassing 37-20 defeat and mounting questions about the direction of a season that began with great promise.
Mahomes and the Chiefs (2-2) had heard plenty about the unusually slow start for the defending AFC champions, and they took their frustration out on the stunned and depleted Ravens (1-3).
Mahomes completed 25 of 37 passes for 270 yards and four touchdowns, and the Chiefs got a jolt from the return of wide receiver Xavier Worthy, who had missed the previous two games with a shoulder injury. Worthy caught five passes for 83 yards and had a 35-yard run, adding a speed element that the Ravens struggled to contain.
Jackson finished 14-for-20 for 147 yards and one touchdown, but he also threw his first interception of the season and lost a fumble before leaving the game late in the third quarter with a hamstring injury.
When the highly anticipated game began, the Ravens looked like the Super Bowl contenders they were thought to be. They took the opening kickoff and marched 70 yards in nine plays on the game’s first drive. Jackson’s 11-yard touchdown pass to Justice Hill gave the Ravens a 7-0 lead with 9:35 left in the first quarter.
But after that, little went right.
The Chiefs scored on their first four possessions, including a pair of touchdowns from Mahomes as they opened up a 20-7 second quarter lead.
The Chiefs took their first lead at 13-7 when Mahomes threw a 4-yard touchdown pass to JuJu Smith-Schuster. Cornerback Marlon Humphrey grabbed at his calf at the end of that play and did not return.
By then, Ravens All-Pro left tackle Ronnie Stanley, who had tried to play through an ankle injury, had already exited the game, and Smith (hamstring), Jackson (hamstring) and Wiggins (elbow) all followed.
The Chiefs built the lead to 37-13 by early in the fourth quarter, and only Hill’s second touchdown of the day, a nifty 71-yard run, made the final score respectable.
The Ravens have now allowed 133 points, the most they’ve ever given up through the first four games of a season.
Here are five quick impressions of the loss, which drops the Ravens to 1-3 for the first time since 2015:
1. On a lengthy list of injuries, Lamar Jackson suddenly tops the list.
On just about every NFL team, the starting quarterback is viewed as the player that a team can least afford to lose to injury, and that might be most true about Lamar Jackson and the Ravens. The two-time league MVP plays with a skill set that is nearly impossible to simulate or match.
So as the Ravens look at a shockingly lengthy list of injuries four weeks into the season, the concern for Jackson rises to the top. He left the Chiefs game with a hamstring injury, apparently suffered on his last offensive snap, a sack midway through the third quarter.
Jackson’s status at practice will be closely monitored throughout the next week, and head coach John Harbaugh might (or might not) offer any clarity at his media sessions this week. He had no update after the game. But with Jackson’s singular running ability being such a major part of his game, any hamstring injury that limits his mobility would be a crippling blow to this offense, which must shoulder the load for this beleaguered team while the defense tries to figure itself out.
Cooper Rush replaced Jackson at Kansas City and went 9-for-13 for 52 yards, and he is the next man up if Jackson is unavailable.
He made eight starts last year with the Dallas Cowboys and went 4-4, and he has a career record of 9-5 as a starter over eight seasons.
The Ravens signed Rush this offseason as an upgrade to last year’s veteran backup, Josh Johnson, because they trusted that Rush can lead this offense if necessary. But they don’t really want to find out whether that’s true.
2. Defensive shortcomings were just too much to overcome.
Beating Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City is tough enough, but trying to do it without more than half of the projected starting defense simply proved to be too tall an order, and now the Ravens have to limp into Week 5 wondering what this defense might look like going forward.
When the game began, the Ravens were already without their entire projected starting defensive line. Nnamdi Madbuike (neck) and Broderick Washington (ankle) were placed on injured return the day before the game, and Travis Jones, who is dealing with a knee injury, was inactive.
Top edge rusher Kyle Van Noy (hamstring) missed his second straight game, and the Ravens lost Marlon Humphrey (calf), linebacker Roquan Smith (hamstring) and cornerback Nate Wiggins (elbow) to injuries during the game.
One play summed up what the Ravens were up against. The Chiefs kept the offense on the field on an early fourth-and-inches play from the Ravens’ 36-yard line. Kareem Hunt took a handoff and powered ahead for 2 yards right up the middle. On the play, Chiefs three-time Pro Bowl center Creed Humphrey cleared out Ravens nose tackle CJ Okoye, a practice squad callup who was playing in his first NFL game.
Okoye finished with three tackles, and undrafted rookie cornerback Keyon Martin finished with four after he was pressed into action because of the injury to Humphrey.
The Ravens defense under embattled coordinator Zach Orr has had a tough enough time containing offenses when at full strength. Trying to do so against Mahomes, one of the most prolific quarterbacks of his generation, without more than half of its starters, was never going to happen.
3. Pressure again derailed the Ravens’ offense.
Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo brought blitzes from all over, keeping the heat on Lamar Jackson and a Ravens offensive line that has struggled to hold up this season. The problems up front were compounded after tackle Ronnie Stanley left with an injury.
The Chiefs officially recorded three sacks and eight quarterback hits against Jackson and Cooper Rush, and both quarterbacks were under duress as often as not. Jackson’s longest pass play of the day came when he avoided pressure, rolled out and found Rashod Bateman for a gain of 24 after Bateman came all the way back across the field to make the catch.
But that proved to be Bateman’s only catch of the day. Jackson didn’t have much time to get comfortable in the pocket to step into throws.
Zay Flowers (7 catches, 74 yards) proved to be a rare bright spot as he continues to show a consistent ability to get open. Tight end Mark Andrews also had seven catches, but they totaled just 30 yards, and Isaiah Likely’s 2025 debut fizzled. He did not have a target.
The Ravens continue to vouch for their offense line, which took a lot of heat after Jackson was sacked seven times last week by Detroit. But the results show that they are losing too many one-on-one battles and that prevents the offense from getting into any kind of rhythm.
(Granted, it doesn’t help when the team takes two delay-of-game penalties in a span of three plays, which the Ravens did.)
The Chiefs employed a scheme much like the Lions did a week ago, using a “spy” linebacker to read Jackson and keep the middle of the field occupied, then range with Jackson if he moved, while blitzers and other rushers brought the heat.
The NFL is a copycat league, and the Ravens can expect to see that kind of pressure and scheme again and again until they show they can handle it.
4. The heat will rise on John Harbaugh and Eric DeCosta.
With consistent success comes big expectations, and the Ravens began this season as a Las Vegas darling to advance to the Super Bowl. The optimism pouring out of Owings Mills in August about the depth of the roster and the way the team was built looks somewhere between smug and just badly overestimated right now.
Where are the edge rushers who were ready to step up behind Kyle Van Noy? General manager Eric DeCosta vowed that they had the right players in-house. The edge rushers have been virtually no factor. Tavius Robinson had a nice sack of Mahomes in this game, but Odafe Oweh, playing on his $13 million fifth-year option, has had little impact and is still looking for his first sack of the season.
The touted secondary has been shredded, and that was even before any injuries. Jaire Alexander was brought in to contribute, he was not ready in Week 1 when rushed into action after missing extensive practice time, and he has been deemed not good enough to be on the field the past two weeks even without any injury designation.
DeCosta and Harbaugh have said all the right things about the offensive linemen, and yet Jackson has been running for his life far too often. It might be true that Daniel Faalele is the best option at right guard. It’s clear the Ravens don’t see Ben Cleveland as a better option. But they never went out and found one, either.
Maybe this offensive line just needs time to develop. Faalele and Rosengarten, in his second year, should only get better.
The Ravens came out of August feeling awfully good about themselves. Since then? It’s been little but stunned disappointment and persistent apologies. From Kyle Hamilton for a subpar defense (and a poorly phrased remark about Ravens fans). From Derrick Henry for fumbling trouble.
Even before the injuries, the Ravens had not appeared, on the field, to be anywhere near the team they thought they were on paper. It’s on DeCosta to answer for that, and to figure out how to fix it so the team doesn’t squander what was expected to be one of the best chances for the Super Bowl in the Lamar Jackson tenure.
5. The Chiefs remain the Ravens’ “kryptonite.”
Lamar Jackson fell to 1-6 as a starter against the Chiefs, the team that Jackson once referred to as the Ravens’ “kryptonite.”
Andy Reid has had the number of his former assistant, John Harbaugh, and the Chiefs, like the Lions last week, played with no fear of the Ravens’ defense.
This opening six-game stretch was always expected to be a crucible, and the Ravens have time to regroup, regather and make this season whole again. It’s only one-quarter old. They have 13 more games to get this sorted out, beginning with a home game against the Houston Texans (1-3) at M&T Stadium next week. That’s the first of three straight home games, with a bye folded in, over the next four weeks.
In a best-case scenario, the Ravens will get healthy, catch momentum through a more forgiving part of the schedule in midseason, and find themselves right back in the AFC title hunt come December. This team looks a long way from that, though, and although it’s a “week-to-week” league, as players like to say, these two teams are clearly trending in opposite directions.
If all goes well, the Ravens could end up seeing this Kansas City team again in January, but that’s an ominous scenario. It’s more likely now that any rematch would be in Kansas City, and Jackson seems to be correct — the Chiefs remain a psychological hurdle the Ravens just can’t clear.
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