Rio de Janeiro has hosted some of the biggest moments in sports history. On Sunday, they'll be adding an NFL game to that list.

The league is heading to the Maracanã for the first regular-season NFL game in Rio, bringing the Baltimore Ravens and Dallas Cowboys to a stadium best known for the 1950 World Cup final, the 2014 World Cup final and Brazil’s first Olympic men’s soccer gold medal in 2016.

Now, instead of soccer, the field will have NFL hash marks on it, with Lamar Jackson and Dak Prescott taking the spotlight.

That would be enough to make this game worth watching. But the matchup gets even more interesting because both teams have looked wildly different from one week to the next.

Baltimore Is Still Learning How To Finish

The Ravens are 1-1 under first-year head coach Jesse Minter, who took over for John Harbaugh after 18 seasons.

The opener looked like the start of something special. Baltimore beat Indianapolis 41-23, piled up 506 yards, and watched Lamar Jackson, Derrick Henry and Zay Flowers give the Colts fits. Jackson threw for 324 yards, Henry ran for 144 yards and three touchdowns, and Flowers added 150 receiving yards by halftime before leaving with a hamstring injury.

A week later, the Ravens looked a lot more like the team we’ve seen before — and not in a good way.

Baltimore led New Orleans 17-9 going into the fourth quarter, then barely saw the ball while the Saints scored 15 unanswered points. Jackson’s interception near the endzone ended the comeback attempt in a 24-17 loss.

Minter inherited a roster with Super Bowl expectations. He also inherited a team that’s spent years turning comfortable leads into awful losses. It took all of two games for that same issue to pop back up after all the turnover this offseason.

Flowers’ health matters, too. He missed Week 2, but Rashod Bateman stepped into the bigger role really nicely with seven catches for 88 yards and a touchdown.

Dallas Has One Obvious Problem

The Cowboys are 1-1 too, and they’ve already gotten both sides of the Dak Prescott conversation.

Prescott threw for just 175 yards and an interception in a 28-20 loss to the Giants to open the season. Then he bounced back against Washington, completing 26 of 31 passes for 279 yards and four touchdowns. That performance also moved him past Tony Romo for the most touchdown passes in franchise history.

CeeDee Lamb was flat-out ridiculous in that 37-20 win, catching eight passes for 153 yards and two touchdowns. When Prescott and Lamb are clicking like that, Dallas can put points on the board with anybody.

The problem is what’s happening on the ground.

Dallas has given up 347 rushing yards through two games, including 165 against New York and 182 against Washington. The Cowboys rebuilt their defense under new coordinator Christian Parker, but a new system and a bunch of new faces haven’t magically fixed the run defense yet.

And that’s a pretty bad weakness to carry into a game against Baltimore.

The Ravens have rushed for 310 yards at 5.2 yards per carry. Henry already has 212 yards and four touchdowns, and Jackson's been reminding people that he's still the most dangerous running quarterback in the league. Dallas won’t just have to tackle Henry for four quarters. They'll have to do that while also accounting for Jackson escaping the pocket or turning one missed assignment into a 30-yard gain.

If the Cowboys can’t handle that matchup, Prescott could spend a lot of this game watching from the sideline.

The Rio Factor Is Real, But Maybe Not How You Think

The time change won’t be a huge deal. Rio is just an hour ahead of Baltimore and two hours ahead of Dallas, so the 5:25 p.m. local kickoff still falls in a pretty normal Sunday-afternoon window for both teams.

The travel is the bigger headache.

Baltimore plans to practice normally Wednesday and Thursday, fly overnight, and get there Friday morning. Dallas has their own roughly 10-hour flight to deal with, and Prescott has already said getting some sleep on the plane will be a big part of handling the trip.

Then there’s the field. Recent complaints about the Maracanã surface raised some understandable concerns, but NFL officials have said the game isn’t in danger and that they expect the field to meet league standards.

Still, nobody gets to blame the flight or the grass. Both teams are dealing with the same strange week.

So Who Wins?

Dallas has enough passing firepower to make this uncomfortable, especially if Lamb finds the same openings New Orleans created against Baltimore.

The matchup on the other side is harder to ignore.

The Cowboys have allowed five yards per carry and haven’t shown they can consistently get off the field. Asking that defense to deal with Henry and Jackson — after a long flight — feels like asking for the exact kind of exhausting afternoon Baltimore wants to create.

Ravens 28, Cowboys 24.

Kickoff is Sunday, September 27 at 4:25 p.m. ET and 5:25 p.m. in Rio. The game will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+.

All stats courtesy of Fantasy Points Data.

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