Welcome to the 105th season of the National Football League. Bill Belichick is gone, but he’s still lurking, blinker on, just waiting for a top spot to open up in 2025. Andy Reid is the GOAT among active coaches, so great that he’s aiming for the first three-straight Super Bowls and his fourth title in six years and still hasn’t won NFL Coach of the Year as the Kansas City Chief. And don’t look now, but the Chicago Bears, also in their 105th season, may have found their first long-term, franchise-worthy quarterback since Sid Luckman came along 85 years ago in No. 1 overall draft pick Caleb Williams.
Or maybe not. We’ll see soon enough, Chicago.
It all starts on Thursday night in Kansas City. Again. The Chiefs will play against the Baltimore Ravens and reigning NFL MVP Lamar Jackson in a rematch of last season’s AFC Championship game, which Patrick Mahomes and his Chiefs won 17-10 in Baltimore.
The action continues with a Friday night game. Yes, the NFL giant doesn’t want you to turn away long enough to watch high school football, as it ventures to South America for the first time, where the Packers play the Eagles in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
All in all, there will be 544 regular season games, 12 more postseason games, an exciting new set of kickoff rules, and countless controversies and thrilling finals before we arrive in New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX on February 13.
1. Can the Chiefs get their third win in a row?
Why not? Reid, Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the 2023 Chiefs looked almost average as they trudged through the regular season at 11-6. And yet the second straight NFL season ended with a comeback victory for Mahomes and Co. in the Super Bowl. Star cornerback L’Jarius Snead is gone from Steve Spagnuolo’s stifling defense and traded to Tennessee. And Kelce turns 35 during the season. But the ruling NFL dynasty also gave Mahomes a couple of top receivers: Marquise “Hollywood” Brown, who is out for Week 1 due to injury, and first-round draft pick Xavier Worthy. Only twice in the first 104 NFL seasons has a team won three championships in a row. The Packers did this from 1929 to 1931, before there were playoff games, and from 1965 to 1967, when they won the 1965 NFL championship and then the first two Super Bowls.
2. What about the 49ers?
Kyle Shanahan’s current five-year run is looking so good that it’s starting to look really bad that his 49ers haven’t made it over the hump. They’ve won 54 games in five years. They’ve been to four conference championship games and won two. They’ve nearly won two Super Bowls, only to see Mahomes engineer second-half comebacks in the 2019 and 2023 seasons. The 49ers still have Brock Purdy on his rookie contract. But that salary cap expires in a few years. And even though the NFC isn’t exactly packed, the Eagles paired Saquon Barkley with Jalen Hurts to overcome the bizarre slump at the end of last season and get back to the Super Bowl, which they also lost to Mahomes two years ago. And, oh yeah, let’s not forget that last year in the NFC title game in San Francisco, the Detroit Lions were leading the 49ers by two touchdowns with 30 minutes left.
