Tyler Loop’s 56-Yard Walk-Off in Rio Earns Him AFC Special Teams Player of the Week

RIO DE JANEIRO — Tyler Loop had been waiting nine months for a kick like this. Not just a long one, and not just a big one, but the exact kind of kick that ended his rookie season in the worst way imaginable — a season-deciding field goal, everything on the line, the whole stadium holding its breath. On Sunday night at Maracanã Stadium, with one second on the clock and the Baltimore Ravens tied 31–31 with the Dallas Cowboys, Loop got his do-over. He drilled it from 56 yards as time expired.

The walk-off gave Baltimore a 34–31 victory in the first NFL regular-season game ever played in Rio de Janeiro, and on Wednesday the league made it official: Loop is the AFC Special Teams Player of the Week for Week 3, the first such honor of his young career.

Teammates mobbed him at midfield, lifted the second-year kicker onto their shoulders, and Loop answered the Brazilian crowd with Cristiano Ronaldo’s signature “Siuuu” celebration — a fitting choice for a soccer cathedral hosting American football for the first time.

Seven Seconds That Changed Everything

The game looked headed for overtime. Dallas had just tied it at 31 with seven seconds remaining, and the Ravens took over with almost no time and almost no margin. Lamar Jackson found Zay Flowers for a 27-yard completion down the sideline, Baltimore burned its final timeout, and suddenly there was one second left and one play to win it.

Loop trotted out for a 56-yard attempt — two yards longer than anything he had ever made in an NFL game that mattered, in a stadium he had never played in, in a country hosting its first real NFL game. He sent it through with room to spare.

“This is special. It’s hard to win in the NFL and we won tonight,” Loop said afterward. “But we’ve got to get back to work. We’ll celebrate tonight on the plane, have some fun, but then on Monday, it’s time to get ready for the next game.”

Jackson had told him on the sideline that the moment belonged to him. “I was saying on the sideline, ‘Your legacy is starting now,’ because I feel like Tyler Loop has been facing adversity,” Jackson said. “I said, ‘What a way to start your legacy in Brazil,’ and he finished the rest. He did it.”

The Miss That Followed Him All Offseason

To understand why Wednesday’s announcement landed the way it did in Baltimore, you have to go back to January. Week 18, Ravens vs. Steelers, a 44-yard field goal on the final play that would have sent Baltimore to the playoffs. Loop missed it. The season ended in the locker room instead of the postseason.

The miss followed him through the entire offseason. It followed him into training camp, where the Ravens signed veteran Jake Moody to the practice squad — a clear message that the kicking job, supposedly settled, was anything but. Every preseason kick carried a referendum.

Loop answered the only way a kicker can: by making kicks. He hit all seven of his attempts in Week 1, including a career-long 57-yarder. Then came Rio, and the 56-yard walk-off — his first career game-winning field goal, on the biggest international stage the NFL has ever built.

Consider the arc: as a rookie, Loop went 30-for-34 on field goals, a genuinely solid season, but just 1-for-4 from 50 yards and beyond. The distance was the question mark. This season he is 2-for-2 from 50-plus, 5-for-6 overall, and a perfect 11-for-11 on extra points. The question mark is becoming an exclamation point.

A Record Crowd Watched It Happen

The stage mattered. An average audience of 24.09 million watched Ravens–Cowboys, making it the most-watched international game in NFL history, with viewership peaking above 30 million as Loop lined up the winner. The league has been expanding its global footprint for years; Sunday was the proof of concept, and a Baltimore kicker provided the signature moment.

Loop is now the third Ravens kicker to earn AFC Special Teams Player of the Week honors, joining Justin Tucker — a 12-time winner whose shadow still looms over the position in Baltimore — and Matt Stover, a six-time winner. He is the first Baltimore kicker to take the award since 2021. He is also the second former Arizona kicker to win it, joining Nick Folk.

The Tucker comparison is unavoidable and, for now, unfair in both directions. Nobody is Loop is Tucker. But Tucker himself needed time; the point of Wednesday’s award is that the Ravens may have found their next long-term answer at the most psychologically brutal position in sports.

What Comes Next

Sunday’s kick will likely lock Loop in for the foreseeable future. The Moody insurance policy is still on the practice squad, but it is hard to imagine the Ravens making a change at kicker while their guy is drilling 56-yard walk-offs on international television.

Baltimore (2–1) hosts Tennessee in Week 4, back on American soil, where the stakes will feel almost quiet by comparison. That is the life of a kicker: months of pressure compressed into three seconds, then a week of normalcy, then three seconds again.

Loop has now lived both extremes — the miss that ended a season and the make that defined a week. On Wednesday, the league put a name on the second one: AFC Special Teams Player of the Week. Nine months after the worst kick of his life, Tyler Loop finally got his do-over. He didn’t miss.