BALTIMORE — Tyler Huntley was unemployed this summer, working out on his own and trying to stay in shape, and he had a phone call with Ravens head coach John Harbaugh. Wouldn’t it be something, Harbaugh asked, if you came back here sometime? Harbaugh told Huntley that he thought Huntley could come to Baltimore and win football games.
After a brief training camp foray in Cleveland with the Browns, Huntley — who had been with the Ravens twice previously between 2020 and 2024 — signed with the Ravens as a member of the practice squad in late August. Elevated to the 53-man roster this week, not only did he win a game for the Ravens, but he saved the season.
Filling in for injured Lamar Jackson, Huntley completed 17 of 22 passes for 186 yards and a touchdown, and he ran for 53 yards as the Ravens beat the Chicago Bears, 30-16, at M&T Bank Stadium on Oct. 26. The win ends a four-game losing streak for the Ravens (2-5).
Derrick Henry ran for 71 yards and a pair of scores for the Ravens, who never trailed after Henry’s first touchdown gave them a 7-6 lead midway through the second quarter.
The Bears (4-3), who entered the game on a four-game winning streak, dominated the first period, outgaining the Ravens 125-8 in the opening 15 minutes. But the Ravens held the Bears to a pair of field goals after two long drives. Mike Green’s first career sack on third down scuttled the first drive, and Harbaugh said limiting the Bears to those two field goals early was “massive.”
“I feel like once one guy made a play, the next one was able to make a play and so on,” Green said. “It was a domino effect. Football is a momentum game. Once you have momentum, that’s typically the team that wins.”
The Bears entered the game with a top-10 scoring offense, averaging 25.3 points a game, but they were held to their lowest total of the season.
The Ravens seized control in the second quarter, outgaining the Bears 138-43. Tyler Loop’s first field goal, from 42 yards, gave the Ravens a 10-6 halftime lead, and he added a pair of third-quarter field goals as the Ravens scored on four straight possessions.
The Bears trimmed the Ravens’ lead to 16-13 early in the fourth quarter, and that surely created some tense moments for a team and fan base that has seen too many fourth-quarter leads evaporate in recent years.
This time, though, Nate Wiggins came up with an interception deep in Chicago territory, and that led to Huntley’s 10-yard touchdown pass to tight end Charlie Kolar for a 23-13 lead with 8:13 left.
The Bears trimmed the lead to 23-16 on Cairo Santos’ third field goal of the game, but the Ravens put the game away with a 66-yard touchdown drive. With 2:09 left, Henry bounced outside and raced to the corner for a 2-yard score. Henry has now 112 rushing touchdowns in his career, passing Walter Payton for sole possession of fifth place in NFL history.
Harbaugh credited his embattled team for remaining focused through one of the most trying opening stretches of any Ravens season and after enduring mountains of criticism.
“They understood the importance of being a team and sticking together,” Harbaugh said, “handling all the arrows and slings that get tossed your way when you’re struggling. By no means does this mean that things are over. By no means have we accomplished anything close to what we want to accomplish, but this was a really important game for our team.”
Here are five quick impressions of the win, which improved the Ravens to 15-3 immediately after a bye under Harbaugh:
1. It’s not hyperbole to say Tyler Huntley saved the season.
The Ravens entered the game on a four-game losing streak and 1-5 overall, and it would be hard to see any path to the playoffs if they fell to 1-6. Enter Huntley, who was handed the starting job after Lamar Jackson was ruled out for the third straight game with a hamstring injury. (Jackson had been initially listed as questionable, but after a curious change to his injury designation on Saturday, he was ruled out.)
“I usually just prepare every day like I’m the starter regardless, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise,” Huntley said. “I am like, ‘Shoot, let’s do it.'”
Huntley, who was making his 11th career start for the Ravens and his first since 2023, quickly demonstrated more upside than previous No. 2 quarterback Cooper Rush, who led the Ravens to one touchdown and committed five turnovers in seven quarters as the Ravens’ fill-in starter.
Harbaugh said Huntley “was a great spark for us. It just felt like the right thing to do. Nothing against Cooper. Cooper is a great guy and played good football for us, but Tyler was the answer for today’s game. We felt like it just wasn’t a hard decision.”
One early sequence showed how Huntley was in command against a depleted Bears defense that was missing a couple of starting cornerbacks. The Ravens were already trailing 6-0 and, after a penalty, faced first-and-23 at the Bears’ 45-yard line early in the second quarter. Huntley hit Tylan Wallace on one play, and then connected with Rashod Bateman on the next. On third-and-7, Huntley threw a 7-yard pass to Zay Flowers to move the chains and keep the drive alive.
Later, Huntley ran for 2 yards on third-and-2, and two plays later, Derrick Henry scored his first touchdown to give the Ravens the lead for good.
Huntley completed his first nine passes and was 11-for-12 in the first half.
In the third quarter, Huntley avoided trouble, found an opening up the middle and ran for 29 yards, the longest run of his career in the regular season. That set up Tyler Loop’s 32-yard field goal for a 16-6 lead. Then in the fourth quarter, with the Ravens trying to salt away the clock, Huntley connected with DeAndre Hopkins on a 14-yard gain on third-and-7. That drive ultimately ended with Henry’s second touchdown run.
Huntley finished with a passer rating of 116.9, the highest in any of his 16 career starts.
“We knew he would have a great game,” Henry said. “It’s just about the preparation throughout the week and how he was operating and throwing the ball. He just looked good all week, so we knew coming into the game that he would have a good one.”
Huntley might have never had a better one, and the Ravens needed all of it.
2. A defense desperate for takeaways got a huge one from Nate Wiggins.
All season, the Ravens have preached the importance of takeaways, but they haven’t been able to generate many. They entered the game ranked 31st in turnover margin, at minus-7, and had recorded just one interception all season, by cornerback Nate Wiggins against Cleveland.
Early in the game, the Bears went after Wiggins. Bears quarterback Caleb Williams connected with top receiver Rome Odunze four times against Wiggins in the first quarter, and a fifth attempt resulted in a penalty on Wiggins.
“First half, yes, they were throwing at me,” Wiggins said. “I mean, they get paid too, so he’s going to get his. But I didn’t doubt myself.”
In the second half, with the Bears trailing 16-13, they tried again. But this time, Wiggins stepped in front of a pass intended for Odunze over the middle and picked it off, returning it to the Bears’ 9-yard line.
Two plays after the interception, Tyler Huntley rolled right and found tight end Charlie Kolar all alone on the left for a 10-yard touchdown and a 23-13 lead.
Wiggins’ interception is precisely the type of game-changing play the Ravens’ defense has not made often enough this season.
“I’m happy somebody got it, because those are big momentum shifts in the game,” safety Kyle Hamilton said. “I’m happy for him, happy for our defense, happy for the team.”
3. The Ravens’ creative blitzes caused problems.
After trading Odafe Oweh and losing Tavius Robinson to a foot injury, the Ravens were down to three edge rushers. Embattled defensive coordinator Zach Orr insisted they could find ways to get to the quarterback regardless, and the Ravens did that by sending Kyle Hamilton and Marlon Humphrey on blitzes from the slot.
That twice led Bears quarterback Caleb Williams to throw the ball away and get flagged for intentional grounding.
“They’re the same as sacks,” Harbaugh said. “And yes, those two blitzes were great. They were well-timed up, well-executed blitzes. Kyle Hamilton is a great blitzer.”
The Ravens still have issues with their traditional pass rush, although rookie Mike Green got his first career sack in this game and it came at a huge moment, on third down with the Bears driving in the first quarter.
That proved to be the only sack for the Ravens, who recorded four quarterback hits.
Orr is right that the Ravens need to find pressure other ways. Their standard four-man rush isn’t doing it. Hamilton’s athleticism, length and fundamental tackling ability make him an idea slot blitzer. Granted, there is risk with that, and the Bears on one play dumped a screen pass right behind the blitzing Hamilton that went for 25 yards. Still, with the state of the Ravens’ pass rush, Orr and Harbaugh know they have to get creative.
One reason they traded for safety Alohi Gilman was to allow Hamilton to play closer to the line of scrimmage, and as he barreled in on Williams and forced intentional grounding, he showed how much of an impact he can have in that role.
4. The bye week did the Ravens good.
Linebacker Roquan Smith said earlier this week that the players returned from the bye “refreshed,” and while they knew they couldn’t undo their disastrous 1-5 start, they came back healthier — Jackson’s injury notwithstanding — and refocused on salvaging the season.
Coaches said they spent the bye week self-scouting and self-evaluating, and it felt almost like a cleanse as they tried to wash away the first six weeks of the season. In all three phases, the Ravens excelled.
From the start, they played with urgency and intensity and got two critical stops in the first quarter that limited the Bears to field goals. On the Bears’ first series, they had first-and-goal at the 6, but Teddye Buchanan and then Green came up with big stops to force a field goal.
The offense also got a boost from the season debut of fullback Patrick Ricard, who had missed the first six games with a calf injury. He was a typical battering ram on a third-and-1 run by Henry, paving the way for Henry to pick up the first down.
It also got a boost from Keaton Mitchell, who ran four times for 43 yards in his most extensive action of the season. It seems that offensive coordinator Todd Monken came out of the bye committed to finding ways to get Mitchell involved.
Harbaugh said Monken’s play-calling was “just incredible. On point [and] really effective.”
And the special teams delivered as well. Tyler Loop made three field goals, Mitchell had a 39-yard kickoff return and Jordan Stout had a perfectly executed punt that was downed by Tylan Wallace inside the 5-yard line. The Bears’ next possession ended with Nate Wiggins’ interception and return inside the Bears’ 10-yard line, setting up a touchdown by Derrick Henry.
Maybe never has a team needed that break more than these reeling Ravens. To be sure, one win guarantees them exactly one win and nothing more. But in the locker room this week, it felt as if there were a collective reset, with past sins buried and hope in renewal.
“I think each and every guy was on the same page [in] the way we prepared over the couple days during the bye week,” said Smith, who led the Ravens with 12 tackles against his former team. “And then this week, it’s like new energy. I feel like the team got a fresh start, and we’re just going out to show who we are. But, it just started this week. We’re 1-0 this week, and then we have to get to 2-0 this week, because it’s a short week.”
5. The momentum needs to continue on a short week.
As Smith noted, all the goodwill and optimism in that locker room won’t count for much if the Ravens can’t stack a few wins, but they have a chance to do that beginning with a short-week game at Miami this coming Thursday.
Thursday road games are always a test, and the Dolphins (2-6) are coming off their most complete game of the season as they trounced Atlanta 34-10. But the Ravens expect to have Lamar Jackson back for that game — Harbaugh said he is “hopeful” that Jackson will play — and the Ravens’ awful start has reduced their margin of error to just about zero. They know the stakes and the urgency.
Beginning with the game against the Dolphins, the Ravens face four opponents in Miami, Minnesota (3-4), Cleveland (2-6) and the New York Jets (1-7) that have a collective record of 8-23.
This win — as must-win as they come in October — keeps alive the notion that the Ravens can still vault themselves right back into contention in a very flawed AFC North — just in time for when Joe Flacco and the Cincinnati Bengals come to town on Thanksgiving.
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