The PERFECT game to kick off the season.
The full NFL schedule will finally release on Wednesday after an unspecified delay led to the league holding off until May 15 — but we already know the big game kicking off the 2024 season. We will get an AFC Championship game rematch between the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs.
It’s not the first time we’ve had a championship game rematch to open the season — but this is one of the best possible games we could have hoped for. A Week 1 litmus test of the work these teams did, it will be fascinating to see if Kansas City’s offensive retooling is enough to try and run it back for a third straight year.
There’s also an added layer of drama with Hollywood Brown now becoming Patrick Mahomes’ No. 1 weapon, after Lamar Jackson was publicly dismayed when the Ravens traded away his top receiver during the 2022 NFL Draft.
Meanwhile, it’s also a chance for Baltimore to see how their offseason work panned out. The team wasn’t able to make mammoth changes on offense, but their big splash was signing RB Derrick Henry. It will be the Ravens’ hope that Henry can return to being a 1,500+ yard back — and making him run into Chris Jones on opening week is a hell of a way to see whether he can.
It’s also the only matchup in football that has quarterback vs. kicker beef.
With all due respect to the Bills, there’s a very real possibility that Ravens vs. Chiefs becomes the next great rivalry in the AFC. In a lot of ways this is because of how these teams are constructed. We have two organizations who are winners based off building strong defenses, with two of the greatest players at quarterback in the NFL, both of whom are often let down by less-than-ideal weapons around them, but prevail thanks to superior coaching.
The rub in the 2024 iteration of this rivalry is how the Ravens can respond on the coaching front. Defensive coordinator Mike McDonald was hired by the Seahawks to be their new head coach, while Todd Monken begins his second season in the role as OC. Meanwhile the Chiefs have kept full continuity, which both Matt Nagy (OC) and Steve Spagnuolo (DC) coming back from the Super Bowl championship team.
Regardless of what happens it’s also important not to try and glean too much information from one week of football. Last year the Chiefs opened the season as well, against the Detroit Lions. Kansas City lost, before winning six straight and re-asserting themselves as the best team in the NFL.
We are less than four months away from the start of the 2024 NFL season. It’s almost here again.
