OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Lamar Jackson answered a question about the Dallas Cowboys’ “America’s Team” nickname on Wednesday by pointing out that Sunday’s game is in Brazil. The Baltimore Ravens quarterback spoke at the team’s facility a day before Baltimore flies to Rio de Janeiro to face Dallas at Maracanã Stadium in the NFL’s first game in the city.
Dallas is the designated home team Sunday. Jackson has never been to Brazil, and he said he has heard the Ravens have a huge fan base there.
“Yes, but this is America,” Jackson said. “That’s Brazil. So we’ll see, we’ll see.”
“But I have seen [the Cowboys’] pass rushers. They are unbelievable,” Jackson continued. “They get after the quarterback a lot and disrupt the pass game a lot. But it is football at the end of the day. We are just going to have to go out there and do what we [are] supposed to do.”
The nickname dates to a 1978 NFL Films season highlight film written by producer Bob Ryan.
Jackson is 2-0 in his career against Dallas. Baltimore won 34-17 at home on Dec. 8, 2020, and 28-25 at AT&T Stadium on Sept. 22, 2024. In the 2024 game, Jackson went 12-of-15 for 182 yards and 1 touchdown and ran 14 times for 87 yards and 1 touchdown. Derrick Henry ran 25 times for 151 yards and 2 touchdowns that day. The Ravens lead the all-time series 6-1, and Dallas’ only win came in 2016, 27-17.
Lamar Jackson Calls The Rio Trip A Business Trip
Baltimore is 1-1 after a 24-17 home loss to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday. The Ravens opened the season with a 41-23 win at Indianapolis on Sept. 13 in Jesse Minter’s debut as head coach.
Through two games, Jackson has thrown for 559 yards, 2 touchdowns, and 1 interception. He has also run for 74 yards and 1 touchdown.
The whole team has had a bad taste in its mouth since the loss to New Orleans, Jackson said, across offense, defense, and special teams.
“Just to see the NFL’s growth with the international part of things, it is great,” Jackson said. “I am excited, but at the end of the day, it is a business trip for us. It is not to go have fun, to sightsee or anything like that. Probably after the season, that is a long way from now, but right now, it is a business trip.”
Soccer players who use Maracanã have complained about the grass this month, and the field has taken unusually heavy rainfall over the past six weeks. On Monday, NFL field director Nick Pappas told The Associated Press that the league feels it is in a good spot, and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Tuesday he is comfortable the field will be ready.
Jackson has never seen the stadium or its field. He said he will have to talk to the Ravens’ equipment staff about his cleats.
“I believe the NFL does a great job at having their specialists go out there and look over the fields,” Jackson explained. “I cannot worry about that. I just have to worry about getting us a dub in Brazil, our first time in Rio. [As for] the field, we have played on bad fields plenty of times, so I cannot really dwell on that. We are just going out there to play football.”
Baltimore leaves Thursday. Minter said the team is committing to roughly a 10-hour window on the plane and will spend much of Friday on recovery before a normal Saturday and Sunday routine. Saturday will be the Ravens’ first look at the stadium.
Derrick Henry And Lamar Jackson Face Cowboys Run Defense In Rio
Dallas is also 1-1. The Cowboys lost 28-20 to the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium on Sept. 13 and beat the Washington Commanders 37-20 on Sunday.
New York ran for 165 yards against Dallas in the opener. Washington ran for 182 the next week. The Cowboys have allowed 347 rushing yards through two games, an average of 173.5 per game.
Henry has 40 carries for 212 yards and 4 touchdowns this season. He ran 24 times for 144 yards and 3 touchdowns at Indianapolis, which moved him past Marcus Allen into third place on the NFL’s career rushing touchdown list. The 32-year-old is in his 12th season and has 126 career rushing touchdowns.
In his opening statement Wednesday, Minter called Dallas a really, really good team. He game-planned for Dak Prescott last season as a defensive coordinator.
“Dak [Prescott] is a great quarterback. He has a really good field-general sense of how they operate,” Minter said. “[I have] a lot of respect for [Cowboys head] Coach [Brian] Schottenheimer. He does a really good job calling the plays, as well as obviously being the head coach. So, it is a great challenge.”
“He just operates. He can move pretty well; he runs a little bit; he can get in and out of pressure and scramble a little bit,” Minter continued. “Then, they have two really big, big-time wideouts. They have a really good tight end over the middle of the field. They have some other good receivers as well. It is not just those two. So, he has a lot of people to spread the ball out to. They do a good job trying to attack kind of what you are playing and how you do it.”
“We played them last year, so there is at least one experience of dealing with that,” Minter added. “So hopefully again, just like the first game, when you play somebody you at least kind of have an idea of how you thought about scheming them up and how you might change things going forward. So, [I] look forward to the challenge. It will be a great challenge.”
Jones owns automobile dealerships in Brazil with a partner of 30 years, he said Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan, and he said Mexico is where Dallas would play international games if given a complete choice. On the red carpet at NFL Honors in San Francisco on Feb. 5, minutes after the league announced the game, Jones said Dallas has fans in Brazil.
“I look to where our fans are,” Jones said. “I’m excited about the Cowboys fans that we have in Brazil. I’m excited about the country of Brazil. I have a lot of business in Brazil. I have a lot of respect [for Brazil], and to be able to take our team, take the Cowboys down there and be a part of their sports is a big deal.”
Sunday is Dallas’ first international game since 2014, when the Cowboys beat Jacksonville 31-17 in London. The Ravens have played twice in London, in 2017 and 2023. Rio is the third Brazilian city stop for a regular-season NFL game after two in São Paulo, and Maracanã, which holds more than 70,000, hosted the 1950 and 2014 World Cup finals.
Kickoff is Sunday at 3:25 p.m. CT on CBS.
