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At 1-5, the Ravens can be called a lot of things. Frustrating. Disappointing. Injury-plagued.

And worse.

“I’ve never really been a loser in my entire life,” cornerback Marlon Humphrey said Monday. “I’m not really cool with being a loser. I’m not really comfortable with being a loser, so I just want to win one game.”

If they don’t win Sunday against the Chicago Bears or the following Thursday against the Miami Dolphins, an even more surprising label will be attached to the Ravens ahead of the NFL’s Nov. 4 trade deadline: sellers.

Nobody expected the first third of the Ravens’ season, packed with games against playoff contenders, to be easy. Nobody expected it to be this hard, either. Now, after two must-win games in five days next week, their Super Bowl dreams could be effectively over at the season’s midpoint. General manager Eric DeCosta would have little reason to look for short-term help at the expense of longer-term assets.

Only one team in NFL history has started 1-6 and gone on to make the playoffs: the 1970 Cincinnati Bengals, who won their final seven games and claimed the AFC Central title. No team that’s started 1-7 has ever advanced to the postseason.

“I don’t have to think that long about it, to be honest with you,” coach John Harbaugh said Monday of the team’s path to the playoffs. “I know that winning the next game would go a long way in helping us. That’s what I really understand. That’s what all of our players, all of our coaches — that’s what you really need to understand. We understand it’s a challenge, but we also understand we’re playing the game next Sunday, and we have an opportunity, and we want to make the most of it."

The Ravens have already made one surprising trade, dealing underperforming outside linebacker Odafe Oweh to the Los Angeles Chargers on Oct. 7 for safety Alohi Gilman, a fellow veteran in the final year of his contract. They could make another swap to fortify their depth at outside linebacker, with Tavius Robinson and Adisa Isaac sidelined with injuries.

But DeCosta’s appetite for a paradigm-shifting move will hinge on the team’s next two games. In 2019, the Ravens were 4-2 and in need of secondary help when they traded for talented, if mercurial, cornerback Marcus Peters. In 2020, they were 5-1 and lacking pass rush punch when they acquired former Maryland edge rusher Yannick Ngakoue. In 2022, they were 5-3 when they made a Halloween day deal for disgruntled inside linebacker Roquan Smith.

The moves for Ngakoue and Smith cost the Ravens Day 2 picks, the kind of valuable draft capital that DeCosta has been loath to part with — even more so now that superstars like quarterback Lamar Jackson and safety Kyle Hamilton tie up huge chunks of the Ravens’ salary cap. If their season ended today, the Ravens’ first-round pick would be the No. 5 overall selection, while their second-round pick would be No. 37 overall.

Starting-level edge rushers like the Miami Dolphins’ Jaelan Phillips (two sacks) and the New York Jets’ Jermaine Johnson II (one sack) — former first-round picks whose current contracts expire after this season and next season, respectively — could be attractive to a Ravens front office in desperate search of pass rush productivity. But Mike Tannenbaum, the former New York Jets general manager and current ESPN analyst, speculated that few blue-chip players would be on the market.

“I think there’s very few players that will actually be traded like a Maxx Crosby,” Tannenbaum said in an interview, referring to the Pro Bowl edge rusher for the Las Vegas Raiders. “But if you’re eliminated, or it looks like you’re going to be eliminated the way the Raiders are, you can get multiple picks for him, I think you’ve got to consider it. I think typically, what you see in the NFL is a little more of the depth [acquisition] — the extra corner, the extra safety, things like that. To me, I don’t think we’ll see blockbuster trades.”

Tannenbaum was skeptical that the Ravens’ front office would embrace the idea of selling off pieces by the trade deadline, even if they fall to 1-7 and the Pittsburgh Steelers extend their three-game lead in the AFC North. He pointed to the parity in the conference and the Ravens’ strong backbone with Harbaugh and Jackson.

“I think everybody has questions, right?” Tannenbaum said. “I think Buffalo’s defense has a lot of questions. The Colts — are they for real? We’ll find out. Kansas City’s playing better, but every team in a salary cap system has strengths and weaknesses. They [the Ravens] have a lot of good, young players defensively. For whatever reason, they’ve started slow the last two years. Obviously, they turned it around last year. So I think we’ve got a long way to go.”

It’s unclear what a sell-off in Baltimore would look like. The 2015 Ravens, the only other Harbaugh-coached team to start 1-5, made just two in-season trades under then-general manager Ozzie Newsome, both for depth pieces: a late-September deal for reserve cornerback Will Davis, and an early-October deal for reserve wide receiver Chris Givens.

Tannenbaum acknowledged that a proven veteran on an expiring contract, such as tight end Mark Andrews, could become trade bait if the Ravens want a soft reset on this season. But Andrews could also return value to the team if he signs elsewhere next offseason and his contract qualifies for a compensatory draft pick in 2027.

“I think you always try to balance things,” Tannenbaum said. “If you can help yourself long term, you’ve got to consider it. But again, if John Harbaugh is your coach and Lamar Jackson is your quarterback, I’m just hard-pressed to think that you’re going to be out of any season, just given how you’re starting from a tremendous position of strength.”

DeCosta’s decision-making calculus is complex. He said before the season that his job is “really to look at the short term of the team and build the best team we can, but also to look out in the future and look at what the team’s going to look like in 2026, 2028 and 2030.”

The Ravens have two dozen pending free agents, among them center Tyler Linderbaum; tight ends Isaiah Likely and Andrews; defensive lineman Travis Jones; outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy; and fullback Patrick Ricard. They will have to be selective with their extensions, especially with Jackson’s salary cap hit set to skyrocket.

Roster turnover is inevitable in the NFL. A Ravens playoff appearance no longer is. A win Sunday would inspire hope that this team’s core is indeed capable of bigger things in January. A loss could only hasten its breakup.

“There would be nothing greater if we could beat the Chicago Bears this Sunday,” Humphrey said. “We are 1-5. We are 1-5, so we’ve won one game and lost five games. The only thing I think anybody wants to do is just to win one game. If you’re focused on anything other than that, I hope you let somebody know, because you need to either meet with our mental health person or somebody, because we need to focus on one game, one practice. I just want to win a game. That would be really cool.”