The National Football League has played 119 games this season. If I was to give you the final scores on 118 of those games and ask you, with all that information, what the 119th score was in a game played in the first week of the campaign I’m betting you would get it wrong.
I know I would.
The missing score is from the opening game of the season when the Las Vegas Raiders visited the New England Patriots. We know now, and you have in this exercise access to all the finals except that one, that after eight weeks of action the Patriots sit atop the AFC East Division standings and the Raiders are buried in the AFC West. Since opening day, the Patriots have only lost one game, the Raiders have only won one.
The two teams that met in Foxboro on September 7th were both squads under the direction of new head coaches. Pete Carroll was leading the Silver and Black after serving in the same role with the New York Jets (1994), New England Patriots (1997-1999) and Seattle Seahawks (2010-2023). Patriots Head Coach Mike Vrabel had been the head coach of the Tennessee Titans for six seasons beginning in 2018.
Okay, that is all the information you have to pick the opening game between Las Vegas and New England.
Who you like?