Browns Beat Ravens 13-10 on Szmyt Walk-Off to Take AFC North Lead

CLEVELAND · SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2026

Andre Szmyt had already missed one kick that would have given Cleveland the lead, and then he watched his first attempt at a game-winner get blocked. He got one more chance because the man who blocked it had lined up offside. Szmyt drilled the 37-yarder as time expired, and the Cleveland Browns beat the Baltimore Ravens 13-10 on Sunday at Huntington Bank Field — a walk-off win that puts Cleveland, improbably and deservedly, on top of the AFC North in late October.

This was not a pretty football game, and Cleveland will not apologize for a second of it. According to Reuters, the Browns trailed 10-0 at halftime, managed almost nothing offensively for three quarters, and still won because their defense refused to let Baltimore score again after the first quarter. NBC Sports reported that Cleveland finished the first half with just 46 total yards, a number that usually belongs in a blowout loss. Instead it belongs in the box score of a first-place team. That sentence has not been true about the Browns this late in a season in more than a decade, which is precisely why Sunday felt bigger than a 13-10 slugfest in October.

Baltimore started like the team that expected to run the division. Tyler Huntley, starting for the second straight week in place of Lamar Jackson, who is out with an ankle injury, directed an 11-play, 66-yard touchdown drive to open the game and found Josh Cuevas for the score, according to Browns Wire's recap of the afternoon. Tyler Loop added a 34-yard field goal, and the Ravens led 10-0 before Cleveland's offense had found its footing. Huntley finished 19-of-31 for 165 yards and that one touchdown, per Reuters. It was a competent, controlled start. It was also, as it turned out, all the scoring Baltimore would do.

A defense that slammed the door after the first quarter

Cleveland's comeback began with patience. The Browns held the ball for the first 7:12 of the third quarter and got on the board with Szmyt's 48-yard field goal, cutting the margin to 10-3, Reuters reported. Then came the sequence that changed the game. Loop missed a 49-yarder wide left early in the fourth quarter. Less than two minutes later, Carson Schwesinger forced a fumble from Derrick Henry, and Tyson Campbell recovered at the Baltimore 35 with 12:36 remaining. Schwesinger finished with 13 tackles to go with that forced fumble, the kind of line that anchors a defensive game plan and a postgame headline at the same time.

Henry, held to 58 yards on 17 carries, rarely found room after the opening drive, and his lost fumble was the crack Cleveland needed. Seven plays after the recovery, Audric Estime scored on a 2-yard run to tie the game 10-10 with 8:33 left. Estime's story deserves its own paragraph in any honest telling of this game: according to Reuters, Cleveland signed him off Minnesota's practice squad just five days earlier because starter Quinshon Judkins was out with a knee injury. Five days from another team's practice squad to scoring the tying touchdown in a division game for first place. Football does not write many better weeks than that.

Szmyt missed, then Szmyt won it — twice, sort of

The ending was pure AFC North chaos. Szmyt had a chance to give Cleveland the lead with 3:44 remaining, but his 48-yard attempt missed wide left, ending a streak of 25 consecutive made field goals dating back to last season, according to NBC Sports. Baltimore went three-and-out, Cleveland got the ball back, and Deshaun Watson finally produced the drive his afternoon had been missing. Watson, who finished 16-of-26 for 164 yards, connected with Jerry Jeudy for 33 yards on third-and-5 to the Baltimore 29 with 22 seconds left, Reuters reported. Jeudy led Cleveland with four catches for 69 yards. It was the one explosive passing play the Browns absolutely had to have, delivered at the one moment they had to have it.

Then came the kick, and then the kick after the kick. Szmyt's first attempt, from 42 yards, was blocked by Keyon Martin — a nightmare image for a kicker who had already missed in the fourth quarter. But Martin was flagged for offside, the block was wiped away, and Szmyt got a second chance from 37 yards. He made it cleanly as time expired. Browns Wire described a Browns team that keeps pulling rabbits out of its hat in the fourth quarter, and it is hard to argue: according to Sports Illustrated's Browns coverage, Watson now leads the league with four game-winning drives this season. Ugly, late and effective is still effective.

Monken beats his old team, and the North tightens

There is a personal layer to this one that Cleveland's locker room surely savored. Head coach Todd Monken spent years as Baltimore's offensive coordinator before taking the Cleveland job, and on Sunday he beat his former team with a defense-first, survive-and-advance performance. Heavy reported that the win gives Cleveland head-to-head victories over both Baltimore and Pittsburgh this season, a tiebreaker cushion that could matter enormously in December. NBC Sports noted that at 4-2, the Browns own a share of first place this late in a season for the first time since Week 10 of 2014. For a franchise and a fan base that have spent a decade watching other teams play meaningful late-season football, that is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.

Baltimore, meanwhile, leaves Cleveland with real questions. The Ravens scored on their first two possessions and never again. Huntley was fine in relief, but an offense built around Jackson's electricity does not look the same without him, and 235 total yards with seven punts, as Browns Wire's sister recap on the Baltimore side tallied, is not a formula that travels. Henry's fumble, Loop's miss and Martin's offside flag will all sting, because each one individually might have changed the result. Together, they handed the division lead to Cleveland.

What is next in a crowded AFC North

The division somehow got tighter while Cleveland celebrated. Pittsburgh's overtime win in Tampa later in the afternoon — read our report on the Steelers' comeback against the Buccaneers — left Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Baltimore all at 4-2, with Cincinnati at 3-2 coming off its bye. Cleveland holds the early edge on tiebreakers, but nobody is running away with this division, and everybody plays everybody again. The Browns visit Tennessee next, facing a Titans team fresh off its first win of the season in a 26-20 upset in Indianapolis. Baltimore returns home still waiting on Jackson's ankle and still very much in the race, just no longer alone at the top of it.

Cleveland fans have learned, painfully and repeatedly, not to fall in love with October standings. The 2014 team that last held this position faded down the stretch, a history Heavy laid out in its postgame analysis. But this Browns team wins differently — with defense, with a kicker who survived his own miss, and with a quarterback who keeps producing the one drive that matters. However it looks, 4-2 and first place is 4-2 and first place. For the full Week 6 picture, follow our Sports desk, including Chicago's win in Atlanta from earlier Sunday.