Sport / NFL — The Bengals Ravens final score reads like a rout: Cincinnati 35, Baltimore 13, at M&T Bank Stadium on Sunday. The game itself was two different contests stitched together — a first half Baltimore controlled so completely that Cincinnati managed 59 total yards, and a second half in which Joe Burrow threw four touchdown passes, the Bengals scored on five straight possessions, and a 13-0 deficit became the franchise’s third-ever win over Baltimore after trailing by at least 13 points.
BALTIMORE — For thirty minutes on Sunday, this was Baltimore’s game in every measurable way except the one that ended up mattering. The Ravens, starting Tyler Huntley for a third straight game with Lamar Jackson ruled out with a high-ankle sprain, outgained Cincinnati 258 yards to 59, held the ball for 22 minutes and 20 seconds of the first half, converted eight of eleven third downs and led 13-0 at the break. Then the Bengals received the second-half kickoff and scored 35 unanswered points to win 35-13, moving to 4-2 and seizing the inside track in an AFC North race that began the weekend with three teams tied at the top.
The turnaround was not gradual. Burrow, who was 6 of 12 for 43 yards at halftime — his third-fewest first-half passing yards in a game in his career, according to Ravens Wire — finished the afternoon 22 of 30 for 292 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions. Tee Higgins, who did not catch a pass before halftime, finished with six catches for 148 yards and a touchdown. Ja’Marr Chase added five catches for 62 yards and his 10th career touchdown against Baltimore. The final scoring line, confirmed by Sportradar’s official match record and the USA Today live scoring table, was Cincinnati 0-0-14-21 by quarter, Baltimore 7-6-0-0.
How Baltimore built a lead too small for what it did
Baltimore scored on its opening possession, Huntley finding Zay Flowers on a third-and-nine that Flowers turned into a 48-yard touchdown just 75 seconds into the game. What followed was control without conversion. An 18-play, 78-yard drive that consumed eleven minutes ended in a Tyler Loop field goal from 34 yards. A 13-play, 82-yard drive that took another six minutes ended in a Loop field goal from 24 yards. Six first-half penalties, including a false start that killed a fourth-and-one chance at the Cincinnati 11, kept both drives at three points instead of seven, as NBC Sports detailed at halftime.
That is the arithmetic the Ravens will regret. A team that dominates time of possession 22:20 to 7:40 and outgains its opponent by 199 yards in a half should not be protecting a two-score lead that a single touchdown drive cuts to one possession — but that is exactly where Baltimore stood, because it finished neither of its long drives in the end zone. Huntley’s final line (23 of 34, 298 yards, one touchdown, one interception) and Flowers’s (eight catches, 137 yards) look productive in isolation. Derrick Henry’s 17 carries for 45 yards tell the other half of the story: Baltimore could move the ball between the twenties and could not run it when the field compressed.
The nine minutes that flipped the game
Cincinnati’s first drive of the second half went nine plays and 66 yards and ended with Burrow’s six-yard touchdown pass to Mike Gesicki. Baltimore went three-and-out. A 31-yard punt return by Dohnte Meyers then shortened the field, and Burrow found Higgins from 13 yards to put Cincinnati in front 14-13 with 4:29 left in the third quarter — a lead the Bengals never gave back. Higgins’s score came after he had been checked on the sideline following a heavy hit from Kyle Hamilton earlier in the half and returned, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Baltimore’s last real chance died on the first play of the fourth quarter, when Huntley’s fourth-and-two pass from the Cincinnati 12 was tipped incomplete — a field goal would have retaken the lead. From there the game opened up. Samaje Perine scored from a yard out. Burrow hit Chase for two yards and the receiver’s 10th career touchdown against the Ravens, a score Sports Illustrated noted capped a drive built on a 30-yard Chase catch and a 43-yard Higgins catch on consecutive snaps. Burrow’s 16-yard strike to Drew Sample with 6:28 left completed the 35-point run. Five second-half possessions, five touchdowns.
Why this matters
Start with the standings, because in this division they are the story. Cincinnati began the day needing this game to stay level with Baltimore and Cleveland at the top of the AFC North; it ends the day at 4-2 with a head-to-head road win over the team it most needed to beat, won in the building of a rival that was playing without its franchise quarterback. The historical frame underlines how unusual the method was: according to research cited by Sports Illustrated from Jay Morrison, this was only the third time Cincinnati has beaten Baltimore after trailing by at least 13 points — and every one of those wins came in Baltimore.
Then consider what the first half exposed, because it did not disappear just because the second half buried it. Fifty-nine total yards was Cincinnati’s lowest first-half output since 2018. Burrow was pressured constantly, the Bengals managed three first downs in thirty minutes, and an offense built around two elite receivers produced nothing until the game’s 31st minute. A comeback this emphatic proves the ceiling is real; the half that required it proves the floor is just as real. Both halves are data, and playoff opponents will study the first one more carefully than the second.
For Baltimore, the loss sharpens a question the Ravens have been deferring: how much of this season can survive Jackson’s absence? Huntley was not the problem in any simple sense — 298 passing yards and a near-flawless first half say otherwise — but an offense that cannot convert dominance into touchdowns, and a defense that allowed five straight touchdown drives once the pressure released, are problems that do not wait for a quarterback’s ankle to heal. Rookie guard Vega Ioane’s knee injury, which ruled him out in the second half, thins a line that already had to protect a backup.
What happens next
Cincinnati leaves Baltimore with the division’s momentum and a question it would rather have than the alternative: whether the second-half version — 7.3 yards per play after halftime, per Sports Illustrated’s tracking — is the real offense, with the first half written off to a bye-week’s rust and a hostile road start. Baltimore leaves with the opposite problem. Jackson’s return timeline, already the subject of the week’s reporting before kickoff, now carries a standings cost with every missed game, and the Ravens’ next opponents will copy the Bengals’ second-half template: survive the long drives, finish red-zone stands, and make a Huntley-led offense score touchdowns rather than field goals.
The fairest summary is also the simplest. Baltimore won the first half by every measure except the scoreboard margin, and that single failure — thirteen points from 258 yards — is why a 35-point second half was enough. Cincinnati did not steal this game. It waited out its own worst half of the season, then played its best one, and the Bengals Ravens final score of 35-13 will be remembered less for the margin than for how completely a game can turn when the team in front forgets to finish it.
Sources: Sportradar official match record (final score, scoring plays, box score); Bengals Wire and Ravens Wire / USA Today (live scoring, halftime and second-half reporting); NBC Sports / Pro Football Talk (halftime dominance and third-quarter turnaround); Sports Illustrated (Morrison comeback research, Chase milestone, second-half efficiency); Cincinnati Enquirer (Higgins sideline check and return). Related coverage: Lamar Jackson ruled out for the Bengals game, Huntley to start.