There are all kinds of questions about Thursday night’s NFL season opener.
Can the Kansas City Chiefs become the first NFL team ever to win three consecutive Super Bowls? To “threepeat,” if you will?
If they do, would quarterback Patrick Mahomes instantly become mentioned with Tom Brady as the co-greatest of all time, because of winning three straight?
Can Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson get his team over the hump, and maybe lay the foundation, the blueprint, for how to beat the Chiefs for the rest of the league?
And maybe most of all, says an Associated Press story on Wednesday: Will Taylor Swift show up for Chiefs’ season opener against the Ravens on Thursday night?
They’re all there, all of these questions, all to be answered.
Some of them, of course, won’t be answered Thursday, but the course of a long season.
For the record, on the field, it’s a rematch of last year’s AFC Championship Game, and the BetMGM Odds have the Chiefs favored by three points as of 1:45 p.m., when this story was being put to bed.
Kansas City beat the Ravens in the title game in Baltimore, earning that trip to the Super Bowl, and then beat the San Francisco 49ers to win back-to-back Super Bowls in February. A third straight trip to the game this season, and a win, would be the first time any franchise would have ever been able to accomplish the feat (Buffalo, of course, got to plenty of them consecutively, for instance, but couldn’t win one).
The problem with the Ravens is that they can win big game after big game, but can’t seem to do so against coach Andy Reid’s Chiefs. Jackson is 1-4 against Mahomes in his career, and the Chiefs have won five of the last six against Baltimore. The last time the Ravens won in Kansas City, it wasn’t Jackson at the helm – you’ve got to go all the way back to Oct. 7, 2012 for that one.
Something will have to give. Both Reid and Baltimore coach John Harbaugh are very good to open the season – Harbaugh is 12-4 in season openers.
Jackson is also hard to contain, and the Chiefs will need to do that, one would figure, to win. Jackson has 5,258 rushing yards in his career.
Before any action, the Ravens will have to endure this: the Chiefs will actually raise the championship banner prior to the game.
For more on Thursday night’s NFL season debut, here you go: The Ravens visit the Chiefs for an AFC title game rematch Thursday night, opening the NFL season.
