Emily Castle

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Questionable means questionable.

The Ravens’ most impressive performance of Week 7 may have happened before kickoff. Lamar is out, Snoop is in, and this season is not lost.

Emily Castle · October 24, 2026

The Baltimore Ravens’ most impressive performance of Week 7 may have already happened. It happened before the game.

For a full week, this organization put on a masterclass in the poker face. Lamar Jackson practiced Wednesday. Limited. He practiced Thursday. Limited. He practiced Friday. Limited. And at no point did anyone in that building tip their hand on whether the two-time MVP would be back under center against Cincinnati after two and a half games on the sideline. Not until Saturday afternoon, when they ruled him out.

The Bengals come to M&T Bank Stadium on Sunday at 1 p.m. with a full 53 off their bye. The Ravens come in at 4-2, one week removed from a 13-10 loss in Cleveland, with Tyler Huntley making his third straight start. For most of the week, though, their quarterback was officially listed as questionable. And questionable, as we were reminded on Friday afternoon, still means questionable.

“Is he part of the training staff?”

On Friday we finally learned what Lamar has been dealing with since the last play of the first half against Tennessee on October 4: a high ankle sprain. We learned it from the man himself, and not because he volunteered it.

As goes most things with Lamar, privacy is of the utmost importance to him, and that is something I very much respect. So when a reporter asked him about Ian Rapoport’s reporting that the injury was neither a high nor a low ankle sprain, Lamar asked who said that. When he got his answer, he put the entire fanbase in its place:

“Ian Rapoport said that? Is he part of the training staff? We can’t go off Ian Rapoport. He’s just reporting. Somebody probably told him that too, though, so I can’t blame him. But my staff told me it was a high ankle sprain, so we’re going with what Adrian told me. I’m going with what Adrian told me.”

Adrian is Adrian Dixon, the Ravens’ head athletic trainer. Not Ian.

All of it, in my opinion, out of love. Because after three limited practices in a row, plenty of us had already decided he was playing. I was among them. So were a lot of the voices I listen to every week. Sarah Ellison and Bobby Trosset on The Vault and Kevin Oestreicher on Locked On Ravens all said some version of the same thing this week: they’d be shocked if Lamar didn’t play Sunday. Reporters said it. Podcasts said it. I said it.

But as we learned from the man himself, we can’t go off reporting. Questionable means questionable. Limited means limited. Lamar said he was “heading in the right direction,” that he doesn’t have to be at 100, and that he still has a “grace period” before he has to call it. That was the whole update. Everything else was us filling in the blanks. On Saturday afternoon, the Ravens filled them in for us: Lamar is out, and Snoop gets the start.

Questionable means questionable

Here’s the thing about questionable, though. Sometimes what you least expect to happen is exactly what happens. That’s why it’s questionable.

A lot of the fanbase is questioning whether Tyler Huntley can get the job done on Sunday. That’s fair. This fanbase has a problem with abandoning hope, and you can’t fully blame them. Heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak: seasons ending one play short when the hope was a Super Bowl. January in Pittsburgh is still fresh. But this season is not lost.

Yes, Huntley struggled last week. He went 19 of 31 for 165 yards in Cleveland, and the Ravens went scoreless on their final nine possessions after leading 10-0. But he was not the sole reason the fourth quarter fell apart. Derrick Henry fumbled at his own 35. Tyler Loop missed a 49-yarder early in the fourth that would have made it a two-score game. The offensive line gave up three sacks and nine quarterback hits. A fourth-quarter collapse is a pattern for this team, and unfortunately it’s not as exasperating as it once was, because it has happened again and again. That’s a conversation for another time.

And a week before that, Huntley walked into Atlanta on Sunday night, tied the game with a 7-yard touchdown to Devontez Walker with under a minute to play, then pushed in from the 1 in overtime to win it 30-23. Two scoring drives when the game was on the line. That happened too. Through three appearances this season, Snoop has completed 70.8 percent of his passes for 429 yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions.

Why Sunday is different

Snoop will have the best five in front of him that the Ravens have fielded all year, and it will be the first time they’ve all played together.

Cam Jurgens, the center we traded for on October 7, is finally clear of concussion protocol after three full practices this week. He’s a back-to-back Pro Bowler and a Super Bowl champion with the Eagles, and he hasn’t played a snap for Baltimore yet. Sunday should be his debut. That pushes Vega Ioane, our first-round rookie who has been playing lights out at center despite it not being his position, back to right guard, where he belongs. Ronnie Stanley is off the injury report after taking a shot last week and sitting out Friday for rest. Roger Rosengarten holds down the right side.

That’s the fifth different starting combination in seven games. It’s also the one this line was supposed to be.

The Ravens stand a chance so long as two things happen. The run game has to get going; Baltimore ran for 54 yards in the first quarter in Cleveland and 43 over the next three. And special teams has to make the kicks it should make. Loop is 10 of 13 on the season, and all three misses have come from 40 to 49 yards, where he’s 2 of 5. Those are the kicks that decide one-score games, and since 2019 the Ravens are 0-3 against Cincinnati, playoffs included, when Lamar isn’t the starter. Somebody has to be the first.

I’d rather have January Lamar

Here’s my last thought on No. 8, and it’s the one that matters most.

I would rather have a fully healthy Lamar Jackson down the stretch than an almost-there Lamar Jackson in Week 7. What’s the point of getting him back half-ready if it costs us a playoff run with a whole one? Lamar himself said that playing through injuries last year was “dumb, a little bit.” He’s 11-2 as a starter against the Bengals. He will see them again on New Year’s Eve in Cincinnati, and I’d like him at full speed for that one.

The schedule can’t be ignored either. After Sunday, the Ravens go to Buffalo on November 1 and host Jacksonville on Thursday night, November 5. That’s three games in 12 days, and I can’t help but wonder whether that calendar factors into the decision to sit him this week. He made progress all week. Progress beats getting knocked back a step in the healing process.

Hopefully we look back in January thankful that he gave his body the time it needed instead of rushing him back. I trust that he knows his body best. And I’m choosing to trust Tyler Huntley to get the job done.

If you’re questioning whether Snoop can do it, that’s fair. But as Ravens fans, we of all people should know that the impossible happens. Sometimes that’s what questionable means.

In other news: Tavius Robinson

The worst news of the week came Friday, when head coach Jesse Minter announced that outside linebacker Tavius Robinson suffered a season-ending pectoral injury in the Browns game. The Ravens placed him on injured reserve Saturday.

Robinson was having the best start of his career. Through six games he led the defense with 3.5 sacks and eight quarterback hits, added 18 tackles, and was playing a career-high 72 percent of the defensive snaps. His forced fumble in Atlanta is what sent that game to overtime. And this is the second year in a row his season has been derailed by an injury in Week 6; last year it was a broken foot against the Rams.

When he came back from that one, it was in Cincinnati. December 14, 2025. The Ravens shut the Bengals out 24-0, the first team to blank Cincinnati since Joe Burrow was drafted, and Robinson, in his first game in two months, sacked Burrow for a 15-yard loss on the opening drive to push them out of field-goal range. That’s the version of him the Bengals were going to see on Sunday.

It’s a contract year for him, which makes this a brutal break. But he is one hell of a player. Just as I’m choosing not to doubt Tyler Huntley on Sunday, I absolutely do not doubt that Tavius Robinson will attack his recovery and be back on top of his game come fall 2027. Hopefully as a Raven.

Sources

All stats regular season only, through Week 6 (games of Oct. 18, 2026). Lamar’s quotes are from the team transcript of his Friday, Oct. 23 press conference.

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