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The streak spanned three defensive coordinators, five seasons and 57 games in Baltimore. It started with a sack by Justin Madubuike and ended in the first game that Nnamdi Madubuike had ever missed. There were no tributes to the end of the run, by far the NFL’s longest active streak, but maybe there should’ve been.

Because, after going nearly four straight years with at least one sack in every game, the Ravens’ defense is already halfway to four games without a sack this season. That 57-game streak ended last month, in the Week 3 loss to the Detroit Lions. Another streak started a week later, when the Ravens couldn’t sack the Kansas City Chiefs, either. Even their two takedowns Sunday of Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud were cheapened by a miserable 44-10 loss to Houston.

“It has to be better,” coach John Harbaugh said Monday of the Ravens’ pass rush, which ranks tied for 29th in the NFL with six sacks. “It has to be better on all three downs.”

On Sunday, the Ravens will confront a young, talented Los Angeles Rams pass rush that has come together in ways their own has not. Both teams have invested significant draft capital up front. Both employ a dedicated pass rush coach. But, where the Rams (3-2) have found success and value, amassing a defensive front as fearsome as it is frugal, the Ravens (1-4) this year have found mostly frustration.

Led by Pro Bowl outside linebacker Jared Verse and two rising stars, outside linebacker Byron Young and defensive lineman Kobie Turner, and overseen in part by former Ravens assistant Drew Wilkins, the Rams rank seventh in the NFL in pressure rate on non-blitzes (38.5%), according to Sports Info Solutions. Their defense is also tied for third in yards per carry allowed (3.5).

“High-energy pass rush,” Harbaugh said Wednesday. He rattled off the numbers of three “really good” Rams edge defenders — Verse (two sacks), Young (5.5 sacks) and reserve outside linebacker Josaiah Stewart (one sack) — and called their interior linemen “high-energy players as well. They do a little bit of blitzing, they do a little bit of moving off the edges, but it’s really those four guys with the energy and power, and we’re going to have to be ready for that.”

The Rams and Ravens adopted similar budgets up front partly because they had to spend lavishly elsewhere. In 2022, Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford agreed to a four-year contract extension worth $40 million annually. A year later, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson agreed to a five-year extension worth an NFL-record $52 million annually.

With Rams superstar Aaron Donald nearing the end of his career and the Ravens cycling through midtier veteran help — Justin Houston, Jadeveon Clowney, Kyle Van Noy — both front offices looked to the draft for young, cheap talent.

In 2023, Rams general manager Les Snead used two of his first three picks on defensive front prospects, drafting Young (No. 77 overall) and Turner (No. 89 overall) in the third round. Young, an explosive but raw and older prospect from Tennessee, had 15.5 sacks over his first two seasons and is second in the NFL in sacks this year. Turner, who had two sacks in his lone year at Wake Forest before the draft, had 17 over his first two professional seasons.

A year later, needing to replace the newly retired Donald, the Rams drafted Verse No. 19 overall and his college teammate, defensive lineman Braden Fiske, in the second round. Verse earned 2024 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year honors after finishing fourth in the league in total pressures (77), according to Pro Football Focus. Fiske had 8.5 sacks as a rookie, nearly equaling his 2023 production at Florida State.

“You don’t expect them to come in and change the defense, but they were a bunch of young guys and they had a bunch of energy and they were just fired up,” said Ravens offensive tackle Joe Noteboom, who played for the Rams from 2018-24. “They didn’t act like that [rookies] at all.”

Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta’s overhaul wasn’t quite as urgent. In 2020, he’d found a future star in defensive lineman Nnamdi Madubuike. Madubuike wasn’t exactly Aaron Donald — who in NFL history is? — but he had elite traits as a run defender and pass rusher. He just needed help, another pass rusher or two who could keep the heat off him.

In 2021, the Ravens drafted Penn State’s Odafe Oweh, an uber-athletic but raw edge rusher, in the first round (No. 31 overall). A year later, DeCosta gambled in the second round, taking a former high school teammate of Oweh’s, Michigan’s David Ojabo, another explosive edge rusher who’d fallen out of the first round because of a torn Achilles tendon. In the third round, the Ravens drafted defensive lineman Travis Jones, another consensus top-50 talent who’d racked up 4.5 sacks in his last year at Connecticut.

Over the next two drafts, the Ravens passed on defensive linemen but kept up their investment in Power Five conference outside linebackers, bringing in Mississippi’s Tavius Robinson in the fourth round in 2023 and Penn State’s Adisa Isaac in the third round in 2024.

In April, even with Van Noy returning from a career-best 12.5-sack season, DeCosta looked for more help on the edge. In the second round, he drafted Marshall’s Mike Green, who led the Football Bowl Subdivision in sacks last season but fell out of the first round because of off-field concerns. In the sixth round, the Ravens added to their defensive line depth by taking Aeneas Peebles, an undersize but disruptive pass rusher from Virginia Tech.

“As far as continuing to have success, we have guys that can rush, and we have a coordinator [Zach Orr] that’s coming into his own,” pass rush coach Chuck Smith said early in training camp this summer. “But I really look at the pass rush numbers and look at what we do. As we continue to get opportunities and continue to develop, we’ll be able to get sacks.”

Just not as easily as they did last season. A year after ranking fifth in the NFL in sack rate (7.5%), the Ravens entered Week 6 last (2.9%). Since losing Madubuike to a season-ending and potentially career-altering neck injury after Week 2, the Ravens’ pressure rate has fallen from 31.4% (20th in the NFL through two weeks) to 25.7% (30th since Week 3), according to SIS.

Injuries have sidetracked the development of some young Ravens pieces, while others have struggled to level up. Ojabo, who’s dealt with lower-body injuries throughout his career, has appeared in just 21 games over three-plus seasons and has four career sacks. Isaac has played just four games and is on injured reserve again while recovering from a dislocated elbow.

Oweh, whom the Ravens traded Tuesday to the Los Angeles Chargers, had 10 sacks last season and has none this year. He’d also seemingly regressed as a run defender. Robinson has a team-high-tying two sacks but has struggled to affect the pocket. Jones, slowed by a knee injury and regular double teams, has no sacks and eight pressures, according to PFF. Green and Peebles both flashed as pass rushers in the preseason, but they’ve combined for no sacks and just nine pressures in 153 pass rush snaps in the regular season.

Without Madubuike, the Ravens’ front has fallen fast and hard. Their four-man pass rush ranks 29th in the NFL in pressure rate (25.4%), according to SIS, and a run defense that last year ranked first in yards per carry allowed (3.6) now ranks 24th (4.7). Blitzes haven’t offered much help, either; the Ravens are one of just two teams, along with the Tennessee Titans, not to record a sack on a drop-back with five or more pass rushers.

Orr, whose job could be in jeopardy if the Rams light up the NFL’s last-place scoring defense, has said the Ravens’ early-down struggles have limited their opportunities in obvious passing downs. But he acknowledged Thursday that the Ravens’ pass rush needs better creativity and execution. Van Noy, 34, the venerable leader of a Ravens edge rush unit, said Wednesday that “it’s not where I want it to be at all.”

The Rams have found their pieces. The Ravens are still looking for more of theirs.

“We have a standard,” Van Noy said. “We have a standard of being one of the best the last two years, and it’s not close to that. So we have to do more and be better about getting back to rushing at a high level.”