The Dallas Cowboys will play their first-ever Brazil international game in Week 3, and that game will be against the Baltimore Ravens. For the Cowboys, this will be their first game outside of the continental United States since a 2014 win in London against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The location of this game aside, the Cowboys and Ravens meeting for the first time since a 2024 Ravens win in Arlington should be a great early-season benchmark for two teams that were on the outside of the playoff picture looking in for 2025. Second year head coach Brian Schottenheimer will be going up against one of ten new head coaches hired this cycle, Jesse Minter. The Ravens with Minter will be looking for a strong start to their season, after missing the playoffs at literally the last minute possible, a Sunday Night Football loss in Week 18 at the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Ravens not being in the AFC playoff field for the first time since 2021 led to the coaching change from John Harbaugh, who the Cowboys will still have to play twice when they see the Giants this season, to Minter – last with the Los Angeles Chargers as defensive coordinator for two seasons.
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Minter will be a head coach calling the defensive plays for Baltimore, making this Brazil matchup one where both teams’ head coaches call the plays on opposite sides of the ball. The Ravens are hoping having a head coaching emphasis on defense can make them at least a playoff contender again, and have had to rebuild the defense in a hurry to help do so. Paired with an MVP winner at QB in Lamar Jackson, and Derrick Henry still a fixture in the backfield, the Ravens getting their defensive woes righted could easily see them emerge as frontrunners in a division with the Steelers, Bengals, and Browns all coming off 2025 seasons with 10 wins or fewer.
The Ravens will be the only AFC North opponent the Cowboys play in 2026, and while week three is far too early to know at the time if they’ll be playing the top team in this division, their poor record against Baltimore all time on top of the juicy quarterback, running back, and coaching matchups in this game is a great place to start previewing all of Dallas’ upcoming opponents.
Ravens Key Free Agent Signings/Departures
* SIGNED IN FREE AGENCY
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* DEPARTED IN FREE AGENCY
The Ravens were involved in one of the wildest stories of this offseason when they ultimately ended up flipping star pass rusher Trey Hendrickson from the rival Bengals. Just before this though, the Ravens had a deal in place for another top pass rusher Maxx Crosby, before that deal was rescinded for medical reasons. Hendrickson gives the Ravens a formidable duo on the defense along with Roquan Smith. In the secondary they have safeties Kyle Hamilton and Malaki Starks, and cornerbacks with Chidobe Awuzie, Marlon Humphrey, and Nate Wiggins.
Unlike the Cowboys, the Ravens did not draft heavily on defense to get new pieces for Jesse Minter. This work went into refreshing an offense in need of offensive line help, reinforcements at tight end after losing both Likely and Kolar, and help at wide receiver.
Ravens 2026 Draft class
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Round 1, Pick 14: OL Olaivavega Ioane
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Round 2, Pick 13 (45 Overall): EDGE Zion Young
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Round 3, Pick 16 (80 Overall): WR Ja’Kobi Lane
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Round 4, Pick 15 (115 Overall): WR Elijah Sarratt
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Round 4, Pick 33 (133 Overall): TE Matthew Hibner
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Round 5, Pick 22 (162 Overall): CB Chandler Rivers
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Round 5, Pick 33 (173 Overall): TE Josh Cuevas
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Round 6, Pick 30 (211 Overall): P Ryan Eckley
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Round 7, Pick 34 (250 Overall): DT Rayshaun Benny
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Round 7, Pick 37 (253 Overall): OL Evan Beerntsen
The Ravens standard operating procedure in the draft for years has been sticking to their board and getting extremely high value picks, even if it means breaking the trends of what other teams around them are doing in the draft. There weren’t many strong offensive trends in a draft dominated by defense, but one of them was a run on tight ends and wide receivers in the middle rounds, which the Ravens certainly had their say in.
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Landing Ione and Young to get better up front on both sides of the ball with their first two picks was great work, but three straight skill position picks after this with Lane, Sarratt, and Hibner tells a more full story – especially when also considering Cuevas and Randall as consecutive fifth-round picks.
Baltimore is still getting top-end production from Derrick Henry out of the backfield, so getting in line with the biggest current offensive trend of adding tight ends and linemen to get in heavy personnel groupings makes a lot of sense for them. Lane and Sarratt help the overall size of their offense too, as big target receivers with impressive catch radiuses to become favorite targets of Lamar Jackson.
Declan Doyle is the new offensive coordinator for the Ravens tasked with making this new-look group gel, coming over from the Chicago Bears where he was Ben Johnson’s OC in 2025. Coming from Iowa with experience as a graduate assistant at that level and being a tight ends coach for the Broncos before this, it isn’t hard to see how the Ravens are planning on attacking opposing defenses this season.
That leads us to other coaching changes being made close to the harbor on the shores of Maryland.
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Ravens 2026 Coaching Changes
* New to staff this season:
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Offensive Coordinator Declan Doyle
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Defensive Coordinator Anthony Weaver
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Outside Linebackers Harland Bower
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Passing Game Coordinator Marcus Brady
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Wide Receivers Keary Colbert
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Defensive Line Lou Esposito
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Running Backs Eddie Faulkner
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Offensive Line and Run Game Coordinator Dwayne Ledford
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Secondary and Pass Game Coordinator Mike Mickens
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Quarterbacks Israel Woolfork
The impressive 18-year run by John Harbaugh coming to a surprising end in Baltimore this offseason created a levy-opening scenario for new coaches to join the staff all over the place in key positions. Keeping a defensive focus from Harbaugh to Minter gives the Ravens some continuity, but overall this won’t be a strong suite for their coaching staff in 2026. Having entirely new coordinators, a new coach in the room with both Jackson and Henry, new coaches in the trenches on either side with offensive line and defensive line, and a new tight ends coach with all of the depth chart changes there is going to take some time to come together.
The Cowboys own staff isn’t without sweeping changes either though, but since we know this is an early season matchup already for context, how much some of their experience from last year can be an advantage from Schottenheimer on down offensively will go a long way in deciding early season momentum. Schottenheimer and Minter coached against each other in Week 16 last season, with Minter’s Chargers defense getting the best of the Cowboys in a 34-17 road win for Los Angeles.
In the last meeting between the Cowboys and Ravens in 2024, also a week three matchup, a desperate Ravens team that came to AT&T Stadium 0-2 got a 28-25 win after leading 28-6 in the third quarter. The way the Cowboys stormed back late was seen as a decent sign, but still a second straight home loss in the first three weeks of the season set the Cowboys up for an overall 2-7 home record that took them out of the playoff picture and led to a Ravens-esque coaching clean out going from Mike McCarthy to Schotty that offseason.
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The last time the Cowboys missed the playoffs in back-to-back seasons was 2019-20, and for the Ravens 2015-17. Both teams will have direct influence in whether or not the other can avoid these streaks being renewed from 2025-26 in Brazil. The first ever team to win a game in Brazil was the Philadelphia Eagles in 2024, who went on to win that year’s Super Bowl. Minter and the Chargers were 2025 winners in Brazil against the Chiefs, and did make the playoffs, but were bounced swiftly in the Wild Card round.
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