BALTIMORE — A grim-faced Kyle Van Noy paused for several seconds to try to collect his thoughts after being asked a question at the press room podium. Like the rest of the Ravens, Van Noy seemed to have no answers after the Ravens were blown out by the Houston Texans, 44-10, at M&T Bank Stadium on Oct. 5.
It is the third straight loss for the Ravens (1-4), who began the season with Super Bowl aspirations but now find themselves reeling toward irrelevance before the season even reaches its midpoint.
“We got beaten every way you can get beat,” head coach John Harbaugh said. “[I’m] very disappointed with that. I did not expect to see that. I thought we’d play a lot better than that.”
The Ravens had to play without MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson, who missed the game with a hamstring injury, and were missing six other Pro Bowl players because of injuries.
But Van Noy wasn’t having it when a reporter asked him whether injuries played a factor.
“No excuses,” Van Noy said, cutting off the reporter’s question, noting that an injury-ravaged San Francisco 49ers team beat the Los Angeles Rams earlier in the week. “[As] professionals, you get paid to play. So we have to play better.”
“We have to get our shit together,” Van Noy said. “Do your job. [If] coaches ask you to do something, do it. Myself included.”
Still, the Ravens’ defense took the field with five rookies in the starting lineup, including two — safety Reuben Lowery and slot cornerback Keyon Martin — who weren’t even drafted. Those two were replacing a pair of Pro Bowl players in Hamilton and Humphrey.
That patchwork defense was shredded by a Houston team that entered the game as one of the lowest-scoring in the league. Houston had averaged 16.0 points per game, which ranked 29th, but they bolted to a 24-3 halftime lead after scoring on all four first-half possessions.
Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud finished 23-for-27 for 245 yards and four touchdowns, carving up the Ravens at every level of the defense. He led the Texans to points on all eight drives in which he played.
The Texans (2-3) won for the first time in the past seven meetings against the Ravens and seemed to take out a lot of frustration on a Ravens team that had embarrassed the Texans, 31-2, in Houston on Christmas Day last year.
The Texans took a 7-0 lead on the game’s opening drive, with Stroud capping a methodical, 10-play, 67-yard drive with a 5-yard touchdown pass to Xavier Hutchinson. After the team’s exchanged field goals, Stroud hit Nico Collins with a 10-yard touchdown pass on third-and-goal for a 17-3 Houston lead with 5:36 left in the first half.
Stroud connected with Hutchinson on a second touchdown pass in the final minute of the first half, and the boos rained down from the purple-clad fans at M&T Bank Stadium.
That proved to be plenty against a Ravens offense led by backup quarterback Cooper Rush, who engineered a 66-yard scoring drive on the Ravens’ first possession but also threw three second-half interceptions to eliminate any hope of a comeback.
Rush finished 14-for-20 for 179 yards.
Rush’s second interception came when tight end Mark Andrews reached down and pulled the ball off his shoetops, but he lost the handle while trying to collect it and Texans safety Jalen Pitre snagged the ball out of the air. Andrews came to the sideline, spiked his helmet into the ground and kicked a water bottle, which pretty much summed up the Ravens’ day.
Here are five quick impressions of the loss, which is tied for the most lopsided home loss in franchise history (matching a 41-7 loss to New England in 2013):
1. The next men up just aren’t good enough right now.
From general manager Eric DeCosta on down, the Ravens throughout the spring and summer touted the depth of their roster, and the impact their young players could make if called upon. Well, they were called upon in this game, and they were badly overmatched.
Maybe the totality of the task was too much. Maybe asking multiple young, unproven players to take over the defense was a stress point too far, because breakdowns occurred at every level. Run defenders didn’t get off blocks, the tackling was subpar again and the Texans ran for 166 yards, averaging 5.0 yards a carry.
“This run defense, it’s just not OK,” Harbaugh said. “That’s not something that should happen. We haven’t fixed that, really, all year yet. That’s the No. 1 thing that we have to start with. We can’t let them get the yards [they’re] getting on first down. You can’t play behind the sticks the whole game, on both sides of the ball. And that’s been pretty much a theme throughout the course of the whole season so far.”
The inside linebackers got lost in coverage, took bad angles and weren’t physical enough. The secondary, which featured two undrafted rookies in the starting nickel package, was a step behind Stroud and the Texans’ receivers all day.
The Ravens don’t have any quick fixes; veteran defenders who were sidelined in this game could miss the game against the Los Angeles Rams next week as well. This is who they have, and who DeCosta and his personnel staff were certain would be good enough.
Right now, they aren’t. Young players should continue to get better, but the on-the-job training is painful when it comes in games that count and not a preseason game in August.
Harbaugh says he knows where they improvement needs to start.
“Fundamental football is the most quickly fixable thing,” he said. “And I expect to see us play fundamentally sound football.”
2. The Ravens’ running game looks broken.
The Texans, like the Detroit Lions two weeks ago, ran over the Ravens on the ground, and the Ravens essentially had no answer for it.
The Ravens, by contrast, got virtually nothing going on the ground. Derrick Henry finished with 33 yards on 15 carries, and Keaton Mitchell, in his first action of the season, totaled 8 yards on three carries. Justice Hill ran once for three yards. It was fitting that Henry had to fight and claw and work with second- and third-effort to gain 1 yard for the Ravens’ lone touchdown of the day.
The Ravens tried to shake things up with Mitchell on a jet sweep, but in his 2025 debut he didn’t show the burst on the ground or on kick returns that can make him a game-changer.
The absence of Lamar Jackson fundamentally changes what the Ravens’ running attack looks like, but with Cooper Rush at quarterback, the thought was the Ravens would try to lean on Henry and the ground game.
They couldn’t do it. They averaged 2.3 yards a carry and had no run longer than 7 yards. The Ravens ran on first down five times in the first half. Three of those runs went for 2 yards or less. As a result, the Ravens found themselves “behind the sticks” over and over again.
The Ravens didn’t have Ronnie Stanley at left tackle, as he missed the game with an ankle injury. But the Ravens got virtually nothing going between the tackles. The Ravens are losing at the point of attack, and linemen are losing 1-on-1 battles.
For the second time this year, the Ravens were limited to fewer than 50 rushing yards.
“I have to be better. We all just have to figure it out,” Henry said. “I’m not going to be negative. It’s easy to be negative, and we’ll try to be positive, encourage everybody and tell Flock Nation keep believing, because we’re going to keep going to work and try to fix this thing.”
Offensive coordinator Todd Monken has stressed that the Ravens need to find rhythm on offense, and it starts with gains on first down that get the defense back on its heels. That’s just not happening.
“Obviously, we want to run the ball at an efficient level,” center Tyler Linderbaum said. “We have the best back in the game, so we have to find a way to be better.”
3. This is why the Ravens got Cooper Rush. Like just about everything else, it didn’t work.
The Ravens signed Cooper Rush for this game. They didn’t circle Week 5 against Houston on the calendar, but the thought was that if Lamar Jackson had to miss any action, Rush, who won four games last season with the Dallas Cowboys, could be a capable bridge until Jackson returned.
Rush had a 9-5 record as a starter over eight seasons in Dallas, and the Ravens viewed him as an upgrade over last season’s backup, Josh Johnson. They paid him accordingly, giving Rush a two-year deal worth $6.2 million. Granted, it’s just one start, but right now that doesn’t look like money well spent.
On the Ravens’ opening drive, Rush looked the part of a veteran starter. Rush went 5-for-5 and drove the Ravens 66 yards. He stood in against pressure and delivered good throws to Mark Andrews, Charlie Kolar and DeAndre Hopkins.
But he unraveled after that. The Ravens totaled just 26 yards over the remainder of the first half, and Rush threw three second-half interceptions, including one on a high-percentage checkdown to Derrick Henry.
Another interception was the ball bobbled by Andrews that he had picked off his shoetops, and Rush was also intercepted on a deep pass intended for Rashod Bateman.
“All around, [we] have to be more timely in our execution,” Rush said.
To be sure, Rush essentially had no margin for error; he and the Ravens offense needed to be just about perfect to compensate for a defense that couldn’t stop the Texans all day.
If Jackson can’t play against the Los Angeles Rams this coming week, the Ravens might need to turn to Rush again, though it’s fair to wonder whether they might give a longer look to practice squad quarterback Tyler Huntley.
4. John Harbaugh says no coaching changes are imminent, but the owner can’t be happy.
Harbaugh has defended second-year defensive coordinator Zach Orr weekly from the onslaught of criticism that has followed a defense that ranks among the worst in the league in most categories. The drumbeat isn’t going to quiet down after this game.
The injuries have ravaged Orr’s defense, and although linebacker Kyle Van Noy said there should be “no excuses” for the Ravens’ subpar play, the injuries will be part of the context.
Harbaugh again vouched for Orr and the coaching staff after the game. Asked whether changes were possible, Harbaugh said, “I do not think that that’s the answer. We have to go to work, is what we need to do. We need to stick together, is what we need to do. We need to find ourselves. And that has to do with coaches and players together.”
Still, owner Steve Bisciotti can’t be happy with how this season, which began with a lot of chatter in Vegas about the Ravens and the Super Bowl, has so quickly spiraled out of control. He surely saw the thousands of empty seats this week, and he will see more of them if the losing continues.
Will he demand changes? He has trusted DeCosta, Harbaugh, and their vision for the roster and program for a long time, and Bisciotti values continuity in the organization. But at some point, something will have to give, if nothing more than to make clear that the status quo isn’t good enough.
Harbaugh often likes to say the NFL is a meritocracy and a results-based business. The results right now, for this team that in August was viewed as a Super Bowl contender, are brutal.
5. The season is on life support next week.
The Ravens host the Los Angeles Rams (3-2) next week before limping into their Week 7 bye, and it’s not hyperbole to say that the season is on the line in that game.
If the Ravens find a way to win, and get Jackson and some other injured players back coming out of the bye, they will have a chance to build a little momentum though a middle portion of the schedule that looks relatively softer than the opening month — especially with the Bengals reeling without quarterback Joe Burrow. The Ravens host the Bengals on Thanksgiving night and play them again two weeks later in Cincinnati.
If the Ravens lose to the Rams, though, they will fall to 1-5 and would need to go 8-3 the rest of the way just to have a winning record. At 1-5, they would probably see self-doubt more clearly than any route to the playoffs.
“After the bye, we’re going to have more than half the season left,” Harbaugh said, “and we’re going to have to find ourselves. So that’s what our aim will be going forward.”
Coming out of the bye, the Ravens host the Chicago Bears (2-2) and go to Miami (1-4). Over the next six weeks they also face the Cleveland Browns (1-4) and New York Jets (0-5). That might give the Ravens a chance to get right. Then again, those teams might look at the Ravens and say the exact same thing.
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