The Ravens Rode Five Straight Wins to First Place. Then Joe Burrow Came Back.

Six weeks after the season looked lost, the Baltimore Ravens owned the AFC North.

A 1-5 start — including an ankle injury that cost Lamar Jackson three games in October — had buried them. Then came five straight wins, capped by a 23-10 handling of the Jets in Week 12 that pushed Baltimore to the top of the division and knocked Pittsburgh to 6-5. The turnaround was the story of the week in Baltimore.

It just didn't survive Thanksgiving.

Hosting Cincinnati on Thursday night as 7.5-point favorites, with an implied win probability north of 81%, the Ravens lost 32-14 at M&T Bank Stadium. The Bengals — 3-8 entering the night — got Joe Burrow back under center and Ja'Marr Chase back from a one-game suspension, and turned a short-week showcase into a rout.

That's the measure of how thin Baltimore's margin really was. The five-game streak was real, but it was built on a defense holding opponents under 20 points and a quarterback grinding through a body that kept betraying him. Jackson's 2025 injury log ran hamstring, knee, ankle, toe. He missed the first practice of Week 13, was upgraded to full participation, and carried no game designation — exactly as he hadn't in Week 12, when he'd been listed with an ankle issue and still played the entire way.

His framing never changed: "We're winning, I'm not thinking about injuries." Safety Kyle Hamilton, also nursing an ankle, was cleared the same way. That's a roster that chose availability over caution — and through five weeks, it worked.

Against Burrow, it didn't. The offense that had leaned on Derrick Henry's third-quarter touchdown runs against the Jets managed 14 points. The defense that had been the streak's backbone gave up 32.

Jackson wasn't the only concern. The Week 13 reports cycled Ronnie Stanley, Mark Andrews, Rashod Bateman, Marlon Humphrey and Travis Jones through the injury list — a notable collection for a team whose scheme depends on protecting the quarterback and winning at the line of scrimmage.

The loss didn't end Baltimore's season. It did re-open the division race and hand Cincinnati life. More importantly, it offered a reminder about the streak itself: five wins over a soft stretch is not the same as five wins against a quarterback who can throw you out of a game. The Ravens' path to the top of the AFC North was powered by a defense that feasted on limited offenses and a quarterback who kept suiting up regardless of what the report said each Wednesday.

The rematch in Cincinnati settled the argument. Bengals 24, Ravens 0.

For Baltimore, the takeaway isn't that the five-game run was counterfeit. It's that the margin was never as wide as 5-0 suggested. When the schedule stiffened and the opponent got healthy at the same time, the same injuries that had been background noise for six weeks became the whole story. A team that spent a month proving it could win shorthanded now has to prove it can win when the other sideline is whole.