Derrick Henry Rumbles for 126 Yards as Steelers Outlast Ravens 26-24 to Claim AFC North Title

Sunday Night Football delivered a winner-take-all AFC North showdown, and Derrick Henry entered Acrisure Stadium with 152 rushing yards between him and the 2025 rushing title. Then Pittsburgh's front seven got physical, Baltimore's rookie kicker whiffed at the buzzer, and the King's crown slipped just one more time. Below, every number from the 26-24 finish is broken down — what held up, what broke, and what it means for both franchises.

On Sunday night, January 4, 2026, 65,400 fans packed Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh for a Week 18 edition of Sunday Night Football that had everything on the line: the AFC North crown and a playoff berth. The Pittsburgh Steelers (10-7) outlasted the Baltimore Ravens (8-9), 26-24, and clung to the lead after rookie kicker Tyler Loop missed a 44-yard field goal wide right as time expired, capping a 27-point scramble in the final 15 minutes.

The Steelers won it the way this rivalry is decided: by staying alive and making Baltimore execute in cold, 25-degree air. Trailing 10-0 before the second quarter, Pittsburgh scored 23 second-half points behind a career-clutch Aaron Rodgers, who threw a 26-yard go-ahead pass to Calvin Austin III with 55 seconds remaining. Chris Boswell's blocked extra point handed Baltimore one last chance, but the Ravens' drive stalled at the 44 and the season collapsed with it. The victory gave Pittsburgh its first AFC North title in five years and the No. 4 seed, while the Ravens — who entered as defending division champions chasing a third straight title — missed the playoffs for the first time since 2021.

Match Overview: Ravens vs Steelers Week 18

The stakes were binary. The winner took the division and a No. 4 seed; the loser went home for good. Baltimore was a 3.5-point favorite behind a 40.5 total, and the over cleared by a mile as both offenses unleashed their weapons late. Coin flip: Pittsburgh, which deferred and chose to defend to start.

Core Match Statistics: Derrick Henry 126 Yards in Full Context

First Downs and Third Down Efficiency

• Pittsburgh converted on 9 of 16 third downs (56.3%) to Baltimore's 4 of 12 (33.3%), and that single gap — 12 first downs to 24 — decided the game.
• Baltimore went 2-for-2 on fourth down, including a 38-yard fourth-down touchdown to open the game, but one clutch fourth does not outwork 12 failed third-down reps.

Passing Game: Precision vs Volume

• Lamar Jackson was a masterpiece in a limited sample: 238 yards, three touchdowns and just one interception on 18 attempts, averaging 21.6 yards per completion.
• Aaron Rodgers leaned on volume and grit — 31 of 47 for 294 yards, 14 passing first downs and zero picks — keeping the game within reach until his 37th career game-winning drive.

Penalties and Discipline

• Baltimore committed nine penalties for 78 yards, nearly double Pittsburgh's 5-for-45, and the whistles kept the Ravens' third quarter from turning into a scoring drive.
• Pittsburgh's discipline mattered most in the fourth, when its defense played clean enough to close out a lead late.

Pocket Pressure and the Sack Battle

• Pittsburgh's front seven dropped Jackson for 3 sacks, and every one of them arrived during Baltimore's stalled middle-of-the-game possessions.
• The Ravens got 2 sacks on Rodgers, but neither changed the momentum the way T.J. Watt's interception on his return from a three-game absence did.

Period-by-Period Analysis: How the Game Swung

First Quarter

• Baltimore struck on its opening possession: an 8-play, 100-yard drive that capped with Lamar Jackson throwing a 38-yard touchdown pass to Devontez Walker on fourth down, and Derrick Henry's 41-yard burst on the drive announced that King Henry was operating at a high level.
• Pittsburgh's offense sputtered out of the gate, punting on its first two trips and surrendering 100 yards to a run-heavy Baltimore attack.
• The Steelers' defense showed the same problem all season: Henry got a big play before the scheme could settle.

Second Quarter

• Tyler Loop cashed in from 40 yards with 13:37 left in the half, extending Baltimore's lead to 10-0 after Pittsburgh failed on a fourth-down conversion around midfield.
• Chris Boswell answered with a 57-yarder to keep Pittsburgh in it, and Henry added a 21-yard run to cross the century mark before the break.
• The second half of the first half belonged to Baltimore's run game, but neither team could turn field position into touchdowns, and the game went to the locker rooms 10-3.

Third Quarter

• On a 12-play, 67-yard drive, defensive tackle Connor Heyward upended Baltimore's offensive line from the goal line for a 1-yard touchdown — an absurd play that tied the game at 10 and energized Acrisure Stadium.
• Boswell added a 25-yard field goal to give Pittsburgh its first lead of the day, 13-10, and Baltimore's response died when star safety Kyle Hamilton left the game with a concussion after colliding with Alohi Gilman.
• Derrick Henry's production evaporated after the second quarter; Pittsburgh's front seven finally played his level, and Baltimore scored no points across the entire stanza.

Fourth Quarter

• Five touchdowns and two failed kicks were logged in under six minutes: Jackson floated a 50-yard score to Zay Flowers for a 17-13 lead, Kenneth Gainwell answered with a 2-yard plunge, then Jackson lofted a 64-yard bomb to Flowers with 2:20 left to make it 24-20.
• Rodgers drove Pittsburgh 65 yards in six plays, finished by a 26-yard rainbow to a wide-open Calvin Austin III with 55 seconds remaining — and Boswell's extra point, his first miss in 40 straight attempts, was blocked at the line.
• Keaton Mitchell's 41-yard return set Baltimore around midfield, Isaiah Likely kept the drive alive with a 26-yard grab, and Loop's 44-yard attempt sailed wide right with two seconds left. Final: Steelers 26, Ravens 24.

Derrick Henry Box Score: Baltimore Ravens Player Statistics

Derrick Henry (RB)

The 32-year-old workhorse posted his fourth consecutive 100-yard game and became the ninth player in NFL history to reach 13,000 career rushing yards, crossing the mark en route to 13,018 lifetime. Yet the line carries the season's most painful asterisk: zero touchdowns after six over his previous two games, and 126 yards against the 152 he needed to tie James Cook for the league's rushing crown.

Lamar Jackson (QB)

Playing through a painful back contusion, the two-time MVP threw for 238 yards and three scores — both fourth-quarter touchdowns to Flowers — while being sacked three times. His 21.6 yards per completion were the most efficient mark in the game, but 18 attempts could not outproduce a defense that finally clamped down on the run game in the second half.

Zay Flowers (WR)

Flowers caught four of six targets for 138 yards and two touchdowns — from 50 and 64 yards — each one giving Baltimore the lead in a game it never quite held. It was the best receiving performance of his young career arriving in the worst possible moment, a season that finished with more heartbreak than hardware.

Devontez Walker (WR)

Walker's 38-yard touchdown reception on the opening fourth-down play set the tone for Baltimore's first-half run game and finished as the cleanest offensive play of the game. His 46 receiving yards on two targets came with zero wasted reps in a limited role.

Pittsburgh Steelers Player Statistics

Aaron Rodgers (QB)

At 42, on the final stop of a 21st season that began with a one-year deal and retirement speculation, Rodgers threw for a season-high 294 yards, kept the game alive all night, and closed with the 26-yard go-ahead score to Austin — his 37th career game-winning drive. He described the role as being a "magnetic force," and on Sunday night, nobody in the building disagreed.

Kenneth Gainwell (RB)

Gainwell's 2-yard touchdown run with 3:49 left put Pittsburgh ahead 20-17 and forced Baltimore into the game's final sequence. He finished with 74 total yards (10 rushing, 64 receiving on 8 catches), doing the unglamorous work that kept Rodgers' drives alive.

Calvin Austin III (WR)

The 26-yard go-ahead touchdown — caught on the left sideline after a Ravens defender slipped and fell — is the play that will define Pittsburgh's 2025 postseason run. Austin added a 16-yard gain earlier in the drive and finished with 55 yards on seven targets.

Jaylen Warren (RB)

Warren carried 14 times for 66 yards and added 33 receiving yards, serving as the change-of-pace weapon that kept Baltimore's defense honest while the scheme tried to solve Derrick Henry. His 31-yard kickoff return gave Pittsburgh a manageable starting field position in the fourth quarter.

Statistical Leaders: Ravens vs Steelers Side-by-Side

Why the Steelers Won

Containing Derrick Henry in the Second Half

Pittsburgh let Henry have two big runs — 68 of his 126 yards — and then made him earn the rest: 58 yards on his other 18 carries and no touchdowns in a game where Baltimore's entire scoring output came through the air. Head coach Mike Tomlin put it plainly: "I didn't feel like he was running wild in the first half, although his numbers said that he was. I thought we were game for the fight for sure." Holding the league's most dominant back to a scoreless second-half touchdown total was the single most important defensive accomplishment of the season for Pittsburgh.

First Down Domination

The Steelers' offense wasn't efficient — 5.3 yards per play against Baltimore's 7.5 — but it was relentless. Two dozen first downs and 34-plus minutes of possession let Pittsburgh absorb a 10-0 deficit, a 13-10 hole and a 24-20 scare, because the clock never let Baltimore lock in.

Aaron Rodgers' 37th Game-Winning Drive

With 1:00 left and two points down, T.J. Watt's read was that the situation belonged to "the best dude in the NFL for this moment." Rodgers delivered a 6-play, 65-yard drive that ended with Austin alone in the corner of the end zone — a sequence that preserved the AFC North title and extended Pittsburgh's season to a first-round home game against Houston.

Why the Ravens Lost

Stalling on Third Down

Baltimore managed just 12 first downs — exactly half of Pittsburgh's — and converted a third of its third-down attempts. A 24-point offensive line that averaged 7.5 yards per play still needs second-and-tenth answers between the touchdowns, and without them, the game boiled down to special teams and one last field goal.

78 Penalty Yards

Nine penalties for 78 yards — the league's usual story for Baltimore this season — killed the third quarter dead on arrival. With Kyle Hamilton already out on a concussion, the whistles handed Pittsburgh's offense free first downs at precisely the moment the lead changed hands.

The Kicker at the End

After the blocked Boswell extra point, Baltimore's season came down to a 44-yard kick from rookie Tyler Loop, who had made 30 of his previous 33 attempts. The ball "started right and stayed there," in Loop's own words — he "hit it thin" — and a team that blew a 15-point fourth-quarter lead in Week 1 and lost Thanksgiving to the Bengals finished the way this franchise keeps finishing: one play short.

Historical Context and Advanced Insights

Season Series: Steelers 2, Ravens 0

Pittsburgh went 2-0 in the 2025 season series, winning both by exactly the margin you'd expect from a physical rivalry: four points and two. Last January, the roles reversed in the playoffs when Baltimore bludgeoned Pittsburgh in the first round at M&T Bank Stadium, making this a genuine settling of accounts. It was also the 40th career meeting between Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh — a rivalry now anchored by Tomlin's 193rd regular-season win, which tied Hall of Famer Chuck Noll for the Steelers' franchise record.

Derrick Henry's 13,000-Yard Milestone

The night Henry became the ninth player in NFL history to reach 13,000 career rushing yards, he also missed the 2025 rushing title by 26 yards. He needed 152 to tie James Cook of the Buffalo Bills — the first Bills back to top the chart since O.J. Simpson in 1976 — and the Steelers' second-half scheme left him with 126. Cook finished with 1,621; Henry, 1,595. For a player who closed last month with an NFL-record seventh 200-yard game and four touchdowns at Lambeau Field, the title snub will echo through the offseason.

Advanced Insights: Efficiency Versus Conversions

Baltimore was the more efficient offense per snap and never led by fewer than seven points until the final six minutes, yet it lost. The advanced box explains why: Henry's yards before contact fell to 4.1 per carry against a 5.2 season average — the Steelers made every carry a war of attrition — while Pittsburgh's 51% first-down rate per possession compounded small gains into sustained drives. In a game decided by four un-scored points (a blocked extra point and a missed 44), conversion rate, not creativity, was the winning variable.

Game Implications & Key Lessons

What This Means for the Steelers

• The AFC North title — first since 2021 — came with the No. 4 seed and a first-round home date: Pittsburgh hosts 12-5 Houston, the top wild-card team, Monday, Jan. 12, 8:15 p.m. ET on ESPN.
• A win would end a playoff victory drought stretching back to 2017 and hand a 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers at least one more chapter before the retirement question resurfaces.
• Containing Derrick Henry is now a validated blueprint: Pittsburgh won both divisional games after making Baltimore's star back earn every yard.

What This Means for the Ravens

• An 8-9 finish ends a four-year playoff run (2021–2024) and opens the offseason with the two big questions already on the table: John Harbaugh's future and Lamar Jackson's contract.
• The late-game pattern needs a fix — a 15-point fourth-quarter blowout dropped in Week 1, the Thanksgiving loss to the Bengals, Mark Andrews' dropped catch that ended last season, and now a 44-yard kick wide right with two seconds left.
• Derrick Henry's title snub will fuel his final push in Baltimore; he has said publicly he wants to finish his career as a Raven, and 13,000-plus career yards guarantees one more run at the hardware.

Key Lessons

• Beat the workhorse, win the game: Pittsburgh's 2-0 divisional series came with Henry's second-half output throttled and his touchdown column empty.
• First downs outweight efficiency: Baltimore's 7.5 yards per play lost to Pittsburgh's 24 first downs and 34-minute clock control.
• In a three-point game, special teams are the offense: the four points that never materialized — a blocked PAT and a missed 44 — were worth more than any single drive.
• Clutch reps accumulate: Rodgers' 37th game-winning drive and Watt's "best dude in the NFL for this moment" quote are what a decade of late-game experience looks like on tape.
• Age is a number, not a ceiling: a 42-year-old QB and a 32-year-old RB both posted career-defining lines in the same game.
• Winner-take-all weeks punish thin rosters: an 18-week, 272-game season left the Ravens no cushion, and one concussion (Hamilton) plus one kick (Loop) ended everything.

FAQ: Derrick Henry vs the Steelers

Who won the Ravens vs Steelers Week 18 game?

The Pittsburgh Steelers won 26-24 on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026, taking the AFC North title and the No. 4 seed while eliminating the Baltimore Ravens, who finished 8-9.

How many yards did Derrick Henry rush for?

Derrick Henry rushed for 126 yards on 20 carries with no touchdowns and a 41-yard long, his fourth straight 100-yard game and the performance that took his career total to 13,018 yards, ninth all-time.

Did Derrick Henry win the 2025 rushing title?

No. He needed 152 yards to tie Buffalo Bills running back James Cook and finished 26 short, closing the season with 1,595 yards against Cook's 1,621.

How did the game end?

Aaron Rodgers threw a 26-yard go-ahead touchdown to Calvin Austin III with 55 seconds left, Chris Boswell's extra point was blocked, and rookie kicker Tyler Loop missed a 44-yard field goal wide right with two seconds remaining.

What was Lamar Jackson's stat line?

Lamar Jackson passed for 238 yards on 11 of 18 attempts with three touchdowns and one interception, and added 9 rushing yards on four carries, playing through a back contusion.

What milestone did Derrick Henry reach in this game?

Henry became the ninth player in NFL history to reach 13,000 career rushing yards, extending a list he has spent the last two seasons climbing after joining the Ravens in 2025.

Conclusion

Baltimore controlled more of the game than its final score suggests: the better yards per play, the more explosive passing attack, and 14 of its 24 points in the fourth quarter. But football keeps a simple ledger, and Pittsburgh's read better — 24 first downs against 12, 56 percent on third down against 33, a second-half clamp on Derrick Henry, and a 42-year-old quarterback who converts late-game pressure into touchdowns for a living. The four un-scored points in the final minute were the difference between a division title and a four-year postseason drought, and they exposed the exact flaw that has haunted this Ravens team for a year: in the moments that decide seasons, execution beats intention. For Pittsburgh, the next test is Monday in the wild-card round. For Baltimore, the offseason starts tonight — and for Derrick Henry, the chase for the one title the 13,000-yard career could not deliver continues.