Ravens get another shot at the Chiefs, but the stakes aren't nearly the same this time
Lamar Jackson understands that NFL teams are judged more in January than in September.
Unfortunately for the Baltimore Ravens and their star quarterback, there's no fast-forward button they can press that would put them back in the AFC title game right away.
"We've got to win regular-season games to get to January," Jackson said. "We can't just go into the season and go 5-12. We're not going to make the playoffs. So we've got to go into every game trying to make it to the playoffs. Playoffs are on our mind, but at the same time, we've got to win this game that's ahead of us."
The Ravens open the season Thursday night at Kansas City, but the stakes will be far lower than their last meeting, when the Chiefs prevailed at Baltimore to advance to last season's Super Bowl. That missed opportunity took some of the luster off a dominant regular season by the Ravens. Even if they win this week's rematch, they'll probably still face questions about whether they'll deliver when the games matter most.
"We were close. We've got to get back where we was, and like I always say, 'Finish,'" Jackson said. "Week 1 — it starts Thursday night."
Jackson advanced further in the playoffs than ever before last season, but the two-time MVP and his team are still waiting for a bigger breakthrough — one that can't come for several more months at the earliest. That could make motivation tricky, but the Ravens will do their best to recapture the form that led them to the league's best regular-season record in 2023.
"You can't look too far forward. Just be in the now, be in the present, and if you do that, good things are going to happen," tight end Mark Andrews said. "If we play each day, each play how we're supposed to play, we're going to get to where we need to be at the end of the year."
The Chiefs don't need to prove much after two straight Super Bowl wins, and the Ravens can't prove much with just a Week 1 victory. Even so, this matchup has plenty of buzz as the NFL's season opener, pitting Jackson against Patrick Mahomes. Baltimore hasn't played up the revenge angle all that much, but Derrick Henry, the Ravens' new running back, suspects it's there.
"That was who they lost to to get to the big one, so I'm sure that's in the back of their minds," Henry said. "I'm sure everybody is locked in and going to be ready to go."
The last time these teams met in the regular season, Baltimore rallied for a 36-35 victory in 2021. The Ravens have not won at Kansas City since 2012, however. Now they have to go there for the Chiefs' first game since winning last season's Super Bowl — with whatever celebration Kansas City might have in store.
"I just think it's kind of cool," Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey said. "Obviously, it's not cool for us, but it just shows who you're playing. You're playing the defending Super Bowl champs, and that's a ceremony that you want to be a part of, but you want to be on the other side."
The AFC championship game was a struggle for both offenses. The Chiefs won 17-10 with neither team scoring a touchdown for the final 40 minutes. Both teams have made an offseason's worth of changes since then, but the key players remain largely the same.
"There's always carry-over, absolutely," Baltimore coach John Harbaugh said. "There's carry-over for both teams. There's carry-over strategically. There's carry-over for the individual battles that guys are going to have that are still on the team. One thing always leads to the next. One wave leads to the next wave, and these waves happen to be coming right after the other."
So this is certainly a marquee matchup, but a win won't undo the disappointment of last January. That's not the objective — yet.
"I think each and every guy's goal — and as a team — should be to make the Super Bowl, but there is a process in place, and you have to respect the process," Ravens linebacker Roquan Smith said. "I'm a firm believer in respecting the process. So, it starts with Week 1."