It’s rare that the first game on the schedule is the most important, but one could argue that the Baltimore Ravens’ season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs on Thursday is just that.
Of course, the Ravens will want “revenge” after their 17-10 loss to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, even if they outdid themselves in that game. Emotions will certainly run high against the team that ended their dream season, but if the Ravens want to leave Kansas City with a win, they will need to remain calm and collected.
The question is: Can Baltimore pull off the upset? Many experts say the answer to that question is no.
The Ravens’ website compiled predictions from 46 experts from seven different media outlets, and only nine of those experts predicted a Baltimore win.
Let’s start with the local news: The Baltimore Sun is the most optimistic of all the media outlets surveyed, with three out of five analysts (Childs Walker, CJ Doon and Bennett Conlin) predicting a Ravens win.
“Normal quality rules no longer apply in a Thursday night opener,” Walker wrote. “One only has to look at last season, when the Chiefs trudged through a home loss to the Detroit Lions. The Ravens will be fired up to face their nemesis, and it’s unlikely they’ll maintain their Derrick Henry-fueled running game this time around. Patrick Mahomes, meanwhile, will start without a full target setup. The Ravens will pull off an upset in a battle that won’t tell us much about what might happen when these teams meet again in January.”
On the other hand, all six analysts of the Baltimore Banner predicted that the Chiefs would defend their home court.
“This could be a night of rude introductions: Congratulations, Zach Orr. In your first regular-season game as the Ravens’ defensive coordinator, you have to stop Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes,” writes Jonas Shaffer of the Banner. “And congratulations, Andrew Vorhees, Daniel Faalele and maybe Roger Rosengarten. In your first career start – either in the NFL or, in Faalele’s case, at a new position – you have to stop the migraine-inducing pressure packages of Chris Jones, George Karlaftis and Steve Spagnuolo.”
As far as the national media is concerned, the predictions were overwhelmingly in favor of Kansas City. Only one expert from ESPN (Kimberly A. Martin), two from NFL Network (Adam Rank and Marcas Grant), two from CBS Sports (John Breech and Dave Richard) and one from Sports Illustrated (Iain MacMillan) picked Baltimore. Essentially, all of the predictions had the game decided by one point, but as the Ravens know, close is not good enough.
Regardless of what the predictions say, we will see what really happens when the game kicks off at 8:20 p.m. ET.
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