There was a time when picking the defending Super Bowl Champion at home in the Thursday night openers was automatic. The tradition of opening the season on a Thursday night with the defending Super Bowl champ hosting the game began in 2004, and the home teams won the first eight games in the series with a point spread record of 5-1-2.
The first defending champ to lose while hosting the Thursday night opener was the New York Giants in 2012. They were downed on their home field by the Dallas Cowboys, 24-17, while favored by 3½ points. That didn’t have to be a surprise given the Giants were perhaps the weakest team in NFL history to win a Super Bowl. During their 2011 regular season they were outscored while tallying 394 points and allowing 400. That remains through 60 Super Bowls to be the only one won by a team that was outscored in the regular season.
Since the Cowboys upset the Giants four other defending champs have been beaten by their opponents. And, like the Cowboys win, there were unique circumstances that led to the champs losing. The most obvious was the defending champion Baltimore Ravens losing to the Denver Broncos to open the 2013 season.
That game, scheduled to be hosted by the Super Bowl XLVII champs, had to be moved to Mile High Stadium because the Major League Baseball Baltimore Orioles had a scheduled game on the night of the NFL opener. Both teams couldn’t play at the same time because while they had separate stadiums the facilities shared the same parking lot. The schedule makers didn’t do the defending champions any favors. They scheduled the game in Denver where the Ravens had upset the Broncos the prior January while double-digit underdogs.
Peyton Manning and company had a chance to get revenge on the team that knocked them out of the playoff hunt and got to do it on their home field. They didn’t miss the chance, whopping the visiting defending champs by three touchdowns, 49-27.
The New England Patriots, following their monumental comeback win over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI, appeared to still be celebrating that victory when they opened the 2017 campaign with a poor defensive showing in a 42-27 home loss to the underdog Kansas City Chiefs.