Caleb Harris
The Kansas City Chiefs are the hosts of NFL Starting game by virtue of being the Super Bowl champion. The team that Kansas City beat on the road in the AFC Championship Game to reach Super Bowl LVIII will be the opponent.
The NFL announced on Monday that the Chiefs will host the Baltimore Ravens in the NFL Kickoff Game on Thursday, September 5th at 8:20 pm ET. The game will be broadcast on NBC.
This matchup will be a rematch of the 2024 AFC title game in which Kansas City beat Baltimore on the road 17-10. This game was Patrick Mahomes’ second straight playoff win on the road, defeating a Ravens team that had the better regular season record and the league’s MVP in Lamar Jackson.
Here’s a quick story from the tape about the matchup between the quarterbacks:
Patrick Mahomes
Mahomes is off to the best start ever for a quarterback. He already has three Super Bowls at age 28 and three Super Bowl MVPs. He’s on the exclusive list of winning two NFL MVPs and three Super Bowl MVPs (Tom Brady and Joe Montana are the others) – but Mahomes isn’t yet 30 (Brady achieved that feat at 33 and Montana at 34).
Analyzing the list of postseason achievements, Mahomes is already among the greatest quarterbacks of all time. His 15 postseason wins trail only Brady (31) and Joe Montana (16), widely considered the two greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. Brady and Montana are also the other two quarterbacks with three Super Bowl MVPs (Brady has five and Montana has three).
Mahomes is the first player to win two NFL MVP awards and three Super Bowl MVPs before the age of 30. He is only the second player among the “big four” American sports leagues (MLBNFL, NBA, NHL) to have three championship MVP awards before turning 29 (Magic Johnson is the other) and the first player in NFL history to have three Super Bowl MVPs in a span of five seasons.
Regular season stats will get there, but winning three championships and having two NFL MVPs at age 28 has merit. In six seasons, Mahomes has two MVPs, three Super Bowl MVPs, an Offensive Player of the Year, led the league in touchdown passes twice and yards per game twice.
Lamar Jackson
Jackson is the youngest quarterback to win the NFL MVP award twice, winning his second MVP during the 2023 season. He has completed 67.2% of his passes for 3,678 yards, 24 touchdowns and seven interceptions and a passer rating of 102 .7 for the 2023 season. Jackson also had 821 rushing yards and five touchdowns, leading the league with 5.5 yards per carry.
Jackson finished with over 3,000 yards passing and 800 yards rushing for the second time in his career, the only player in NFL history to reach those numbers twice in one season.
Jackson improved to 58-19 as a starting quarterback this season, as his .753 winning percentage is the third-best for a quarterback in NFL history (only Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady have a higher winning percentage). His 5,258 rushing yards are the fourth-most by a quarterback in NFL history, while his 13 100-yard rushing games and 61.8 rushing yards per game are the most by a quarterback in league history.
Jackson recorded his third season with over 800 rushing yards in 2023, breaking a tie with Michael Vick (two) for the most such seasons by a quarterback in NFL history. He is the only quarterback since the 1970 merger to reach 700 rushing yards in five consecutive seasons (2019-23) and is the only quarterback since the 1970 merger to reach 600 rushing yards in each of the first six years of his career (2018 – 23). No other quarterback in NFL history has had more than four such seasons in his career.
Jackson is one of four quarterbacks since the 1970 merger with multiple seasons to post at least 25 passing touchdowns and five rushing touchdowns in a career, joining Josh Allen (four), Deshaun Watson (two) and Steve Young (two ). He has four career games with at least five touchdown passes, the third-most such games by a player in his first six seasons in NFL history. Only Patrick Mahomes (six games) and Dan Marino (five) have more.
The verdict
The NFL could not have asked for a bigger matchup to start the season, taking advantage of the boost from a record-breaking Super Bowl in terms of viewership. Mahomes vs. Jackson will be must-see TV as it leads one of the best teams in the NFL.
The road to a three-peat for the Chiefs begins with their biggest competition in the AFC. This matchup will be huge for playoff implications.
