Join the huddle. Sign up here for Ravens updates in your inbox.

After one of the bleakest games of his coaching tenure, an injury-filled 37-20 loss Sunday to the Kansas City Chiefs, Ravens defensive coordinator Zach Orr met with his team this week to offer some words of wisdom. They came from an unlikely source: an American motivational writer named William Arthur Ward.

“Adversity causes some men to break, and it causes some other men to break records,” Orr remembered telling his defense. “So let’s go break records.”

The 1-3 Ravens are breaking records. Just not the records they want. The 133 points they’ve allowed are the most any Ravens defense has allowed over the first four games of a season in franchise history.

Now, not even Sunday’s matchup with the Texans (1-3) looks like a get-right game. In the Ravens’ three games against Houston quarterback C.J. Stroud, all blowout wins, their defense has not allowed a single touchdown. But the banged-up unit that takes the field Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium will be missing not only defensive lineman Nnamdi Madubuike but potentially three other injured Pro Bowl players: inside linebacker Roquan Smith, cornerback Marlon Humphrey and safety Kyle Hamilton.

Even worse, the Ravens likely won’t have quarterback Lamar Jackson to help pick up the slack. Jackson missed practice Wednesday and Thursday with a hamstring injury that knocked him out of Sunday’s loss, and coach John Harbaugh has declined to offer a timetable for his return.

As the Ravens and Texans, two reigning division champions, try to shake off early-season disappointments, here’s what to watch in the teams’ Week 5 matchup. All stats are courtesy of Sports Info Solutions, Pro Football Focus and the NFL’s Next Gen Stats unless otherwise noted.

1. The last time Jackson faced the Texans, in a Week 17 blowout win on Christmas Day last season, it turned into a showcase for maybe his greatest strength — and a reminder of his new backup’s biggest weakness: out-of-structure playmaking.

Jackson went 10-for-15 for 168 yards and two touchdowns in Houston, and almost half of his passing yards (76) came on a pair of pressured throws outside the pocket: an ad-libbed check-down to Mark Andrews that the tight end turned into a 67-yard catch-and-run, and a 9-yard touchdown to tight end Isaiah Likely about a minute later on which Jackson took 8.4 seconds from the time the ball was snapped to the moment he released the throw.

Ravens backup quarterback Cooper Rush is more of a point-and-shoot quarterback. Of his 339 completions from 2021 to 2024 with the Dallas Cowboys, just 13 were on pressured throws outside the pocket. His average time to throw over his career is 2.36 seconds, which is 0.16 seconds faster than the quickest-trigger quarterback this year, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Aaron Rodgers (2.52 seconds), and more than a half-second faster than Jackson’s 2025 average (2.87 seconds).

But Rush doesn’t always sacrifice aggressiveness for expediency on his drop-backs. Last season, when Rush’s average time to throw was 2.35 seconds, 32.8% of his passes on non-screen plays traveled at least 10 air yards. That wasn’t far behind the rate of Cowboys starter Dak Prescott (34.8%), one of the NFL’s bolder downfield passers.

“Obviously, as athletic as ‘Coop’ is, some of those things are not going to look the same as Lamar, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still be effective and efficient,” Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken said Thursday. “It’s just a different way of approaching certain aspects of your game. That’s obvious, but our staff and myself have enough background and history with guys that we can still play winning football. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have signed Cooper.”

2. Whether it’s Jackson or Rush starting at quarterback, the Ravens’ inconsistent pass protection will get another test Sunday it can’t afford to flunk.

Led by star defensive ends Danielle Hunter (four sacks) and Will Anderson Jr. (three sacks), the Texans are 11th in sack rate (7.4%) and 12th in pressure rate (38.3%) this season. Pressured quarterbacks almost never fare well, but they’ve especially suffered against Houston’s defense this season:

• In Week 1, the Los Angeles Rams’ Matthew Stafford went 5-for-10 for 86 yards and was sacked three times on his 13 pressured drop-backs.
• In Week 2, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Baker Mayfield went 6-for-14 for 78 yards and was sacked four times on his 21 pressured drop-backs. He also had three scrambles for 33 yards.
• In Week 3, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence went 2-for-9 for 25 yards and took two sacks on his 11 pressured drop-backs.
• In Week 4, the Tennessee Titans’ Cam Ward went 1-for-8 for 33 yards and took two sacks on his 12 pressured drop-backs. The No. 1 overall pick also had two scrambles for 22 yards.

Altogether, opposing quarterbacks have gone 14-for-41 (34.2%) for 222 yards (5.4 yards per attempt), no touchdowns and no interceptions when under pressure against the Texans this season, good for a 53.1 passer rating.

“I think their defense runs on those two guys [Hunter and Anderson] and some other really good ancillary players in the secondary,” right tackle Roger Rosengarten said. “But it all starts up front with them, so they’re really good players. I think we’ve built a good game plan.”

3. The Ravens would prefer to have every defensive starter available Sunday. But there is some good timing to their injury bug.

If Orr had to pick any remaining game on the Ravens’ schedule to enter with personnel limitations, it might be this one. The Texans are 23rd in the NFL in yards per play (5.1), 26th in expected points added per play, 29th in scoring offense (16.0 points per game) and 30th in success rate, according to analytics site rbsdm.com.

Some of Houston’s struggles could be owed to a tough early-season schedule; the Rams, Buccaneers and Jaguars, the Texans’ first three opponents, all ranked among the NFL’s most efficient defenses in September.

But entering Week 5, two of Houston’s biggest weaknesses — running the ball and protecting Stroud — align with two of the Ravens’ biggest weaknesses. The Texans are last in the NFL in rushing success rate while ranking 20th in yards per carry (4.1). They also have PFF’s sixth-worst pass-blocking grade and ESPN’s fifth-worst pass block win rate. Stroud has been sacked 10 times, seventh most in the NFL.

On Thursday, Texans offensive coordinator Nick Caley was asked how to “take advantage” of a reeling Ravens defense. “By taking care of ourselves and worrying about ourselves,” he told local reporters. “We’ve got to practice the right way. We’ve got to go out and we’ve got to execute. They have a history of having a very, very good team. They’re well coached. They’re physical. You’ve got to go play a clean game, and you’ve got to play a physical game.”

4. The Texans’ offensive line was one of the worst in the NFL last season, with one breakdown after another boiling down to poor fundamentals. Stunts and twists were regular headaches for a unit that struggled to communicate.

In the Ravens’ Christmas Day win over Houston, for example, their first of five sacks came after outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy looped around Madubuike as he slammed into the right side of Houston’s offensive line, creating a traffic-free lane to Stroud for Van Noy.

Houston’s offensive line play has improved somewhat this season, even after trading away left tackle Laremy Tunsil to the Washington Commanders this past offseason, but pass rush games can still give them trouble.

The Ravens will need to find a way to use them. So far this season, they haven’t. According to analytics site FTN, the Ravens rank 30th in the NFL in stunt rate (7.6%), well below the league average (16.1%). The Ravens have embraced deception in other ways, including a higher-than-average rate of simulated pressures (12.5%), where they threaten offenses with a presnap blitz look before rushing just four defenders.

But Orr said the Ravens’ early-down struggles have limited their creativity on third down. “It’s a mix of strategy, situation and personnel,” he said. “I think, honestly, we’ve got to get teams into more third-and-long situations. … [If] we’re living in third-and-4, third-and-3 and third-and-5, and you can run all the games you want to, the ball is going to be out in those situations.”

5. Injuries will likely keep a handful of Ravens starters out of Sunday’s game. But with several doors closing, others could open for Ravens reserves.

Running back Keaton Mitchell and cornerback Jaire Alexander, who’ve combined to play just one game this season, could both be activated Sunday. Mitchell, a training camp and preseason standout, hasn’t appeared in a game yet, stuck behind Rasheen Ali on the team’s depth chart because of his relatively limited special teams value.

Mitchell averaged 8.4 yards per carry and 10.3 yards per catch as a rookie in 2023 before suffering a season-ending knee injury. Last season, he had just 15 carries for 30 yards and one catch for 28 yards as he struggled to regain his trademark burst. If Mitchell makes his season debut Sunday, he could contribute as a change-of-pace back behind Derrick Henry and Justice Hill as well as a kickoff returner.

“I think right now, we’re going to keep bringing him along,” special teams coordinator Chris Horton said last week. “He’s going to keep coming out here. He’s going to keep working. He’s going to keep doing the things that we ask him to do, and then when his time comes, he’s going to go out there, and he’s going to play well.”

Alexander, meanwhile, hasn’t played since a disappointing Week 1 performance against the Buffalo Bills, when he allowed three catches on three targets for 83 yards, according to PFF. After Alexander was inactive for a Week 2 win over the Cleveland Browns, Harbaugh said that a knee injury in training camp had kept him from getting into “football shape.” He added: “He’ll be out there very soon, playing great ball for us.”

With the availability of Chidobe Awuzie and Humphrey in question — injuries sidelined both starting cornerbacks at practice Wednesday and Thursday — “soon” could be Sunday.

“He’s getting close,” Orr said of Alexander. “I’m saying that he’s getting close. I think he’s stacked a good couple weeks of practice. You can see that he’s getting his swagger back, like I said last week, and that’s continued to trend upwards. So when he’s fully ready, he’ll know. And they’ll let us know, and we’ll be ready for him, and he’ll play great football for us.”