CHIEFS TO HOST RAVENS ON SEPTEMBER 5th AS AFC CHAMPIONSHIP REMATCH OPENS 2024 SEASON
The back to back Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs will kick off the 2024 NFL season at Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday, September 5th at 8:20pm ET against the Baltimore Ravens.
The game, a rematch of the AFC Championship game in January, will be aired on NBC, the league confirmed on Monday ahead of the full NFL Schedule release this week.
Last year’s AFC Championship game turned out to be one of the most memorable games of the 2023 season, and saw the Chiefs take down the best team in the conference on the road to advance to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years.
The game, a 17-10 win for the Chiefs, garnered a historic national TV audience of more than 55 million people. CBS confirmed that total viewership peaked at 64 million, which must have played a role in the league’s determination of the season opener.
The game in September will pit a revamped Baltimore Ravens side against the Super Bowl champions as reigning MVP, Lamar Jackson, and his team get first crack at payback following the result in January.
The Ravens will spot a different look offensively going into Geha Field, having added bulldozing running Derrick Henry this offseason and allowed superstar wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. to leave in free agency. Baltimore also lost most of its veterans on its offensive line in the offseason and are expected to field one of the youngest lines in the league in 2024.
The Chiefs on the other hand, boast former Ravens wide receiver Marquise “Hollywood” Brown and this year’s first-round pick and 40-yard dash record-breaker Xavier Worthy, a couple of stud receivers who should test the Ravens new-look secondary.
Baltimore added new pieces like Clemson CB Nate Wiggins in the first round of the draft last month and Iowa State CB TJ Tampa to one of the best units in the NFL last year. The team, however, lost ball hawk safety Geno Stone to the Cincinnati Bengals and Pro Bowl LB Patrick Queen to the Pittsburgh Steelers in free agency.
Ravens vs. Chiefs on opening night is the second matchup of the 2024 season that has been confirmed up to this point, following the league’s confirmation of Packers vs. Eagles in Sao Paulo on Friday, September 6th. The game will be the NFL’s first on Brazilian soil and will be played the day after the opener. NBC will air the game exclusively on its streaming platform, Peacock.
In addition to their announcement of the season opener, NBC also announced that they acquired an additional NFL regular-season game on Saturday, December 21st in Week 16. Two games will be played on that particular Saturday, and NBC will now get to broadcast one of them.
Each of the NFL’s network partners will announce a key 2024 season game over the next few days prior to Wednesday’s 8pm ET full schedule release. The full 2024 NFL Schedule release on Wednesday will be aired live on NFL Network and ESPN 2 and will also be streamed on NFL+.
-Maher Abucheri
Twitter: @pabloikonyero
Photo: All-Pro Reels. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.