It’s like coming down the stairs as a kid and finding a new bike in front of the tree on Christmas morning. That is the feeling I get with the start of a National Football league season.
It starts tonight, when the two-time Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs open at home against the Baltimore Ravens in a season they hope ends with them being the first team in history to win three straight Super Bowls.
Since 2004, the NFL has opened their regular season on Thursday night with the defending champion hosting a quality opponent. Twice since that tradition began this game has not featured the defending champ opening at home. In 2013, the Baltimore Ravens had earned the honor of hosting this game but had to relinquish that right because the Baltimore Orioles were slated to play baseball and wouldn’t reschedule their game. The professional baseball and football teams in Baltimore do not share the same stadium, but their stadiums do use the same parking lot.
To add a bitter pill to the Ravens having to open on the road was that the schedule makers put them in Denver against Peyton Manning, the team they had upset the season before enroute to their Super Bowl XLVII win over the San Francisco 49ers. At home, and looking to avenge that playoff loss, Manning and company buried the Ravens in the opener, 49-27.
The other time the defending Super Bowl winner didn’t host the Thursday night opener was in 2019, that year, in honor of their 100th season, the league opened with the oldest rivalry in the league, the Green Bay Packers versus Chicago Bears.
The first dozen Super Bowl winners at home won the opener 11 times and had a point spread record of 7-2-3.
The public caught on to this trend and the smart guys setting the lines and the schedule makers colluded to shift the advantage from the home team to the visitor in recent years. A defending Super Bowl winner has not beaten the point spread on opening night since 2020 and have lost the past two years straight-up. In 2022, the Los Angeles got blown out by the Buffalo Bills and the Chiefs dropped a one-point decision to the Detroit Lions last season.
Tonight, the schedule makers have again given the home team a really tough opponent with the Baltimore Ravens, who lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in last season’s AFC Championship Game. The Ravens are a slight underdog, a spread that has bounced back-and-forth over the week between the Chiefs giving 2½ or 3 points.
The Ravens are the team picked only behind the Chiefs on the odds to win the American Football Conference this year and with the motivation of coming off last season’s tough home postseason loss there is a real good chance Patrick Mahomes and company could lose a second straight opener.
Last year, Kansas City became only the second team in NFL history to win a Super Bowl after losing at home in the season’s first week.
In other words, the Chiefs are rulebreakers … on the good side.
A great matchup from a football fans perspective, as exciting as finding a new bike in front of the Christmas tree for an eight-year-old. But, from a wagering standpoint, I am not inclined to see Kansas City lose a second straight opener and not interested in betting against Baltimore when they are getting points on the spread.