The Baltimore Ravens were thisclose to beating the Kansas City Chiefs. With 20 seconds to go in Thursday night’s season opener, the Ravens found themselves 10 yards away from a game-tying touchdown. Kansas City had outplayed Baltimore for most of the night, but the Ravens had three plays, and three pass attempts to three open receivers, to try to even the score. Each attempt came closer than the last, and just when it seemed like the Ravens had done it—when Lamar Jackson found Isaiah Likely in the back of the end zone—the score was called back because Likely’s toe landed on the line. The game ended, and the Chiefs won 27-20.
Baltimore couldn’t have come closer to tying the game without actually tying the game if they tried. The same was true in January’s AFC championship game between these teams, with Zay Flowers getting the ball knocked out of his hands 2 inches from the goal line. That, in a nutshell, is what it’s like to try to beat the Chiefs: You can get so close, and yet you’ll still be so far away.
Despite the last-second nature of the result, this game exposed the fact that the gulf between these teams has only widened since they last played in January—a 17-10 Chiefs win. And the message for the rest of the NFL teams watching on Thursday night was clear: illegal formation, offense. Oh wait, sorry, Shawn Hochuli just grabbed my keyboard. The actual message sent by Thursday’s game is that we have to take this Chiefs three-peat thing seriously. Because Kansas City certainly is.
A third consecutive Super Bowl win was on Patrick Mahomes’s mind as soon as he won his second in a row. While the confetti rained down on Mahomes and pending free agent Chris Jones, Mahomes told Jones he had to re-sign with the team. “You ain’t going nowhere, I promise you,” Mahomes said. “We’re not done, dog. I want three. Three. Nobody’s ever gotten three.”
That single-minded focus was reminiscent of Bill Belichick, who, as his team celebrated its comeback from down 28-3 against the Falcons in Super Bowl LI, lamented that he was behind on his offseason preparation. Such is the attitude required to achieve generational greatness.
But while the Chiefs won it all last year, Mahomes and Co. knew they’d need more to get back to the playoffs and win a third straight Super Bowl. The team last season had issues: Kansas City’s receiving corps led the NFL in drops. Chiefs pass catchers would space their routes wrong in crucial moments. Punt returner Mecole Hardman struggled to catch punts. The whole thing was a mess. So to address that, the Chiefs traded up in this year’s draft to snag receiver Xavier Worthy, a speedster who could potentially replicate the role Tyreek Hill played for them two years ago. Kansas City also selected its potential left tackle of the future, Kingsley Suamataia out of BYU. And they signed wide receiver Marquise Brown, who missed Thursday’s game with a shoulder injury but is expected back soon.
Against the Ravens, the Chiefs seemed eager to unleash their new-look offense. Receiver Rashee Rice hauled in seven catches for 103 yards and was open on crossing routes all night. Worthy had a 20-plus-yard rushing touchdown and a 30-plus-yard receiving touchdown in the same game—something that a receiver has done only five times in the past 20 years (four of which have happened on Andy Reid teams). And the Chiefs incorporated a lot of Miami’s innovative motion-based blocking into their running game, using motion to set up various run designs.
Get ready for more and more creativity with how players, especially tight ends, are used in the run game this season.
Chiefs start in a spread formation with Noah Gray in the slot. He speed motions back into the backfield before quickly returning and creating a Counter run. pic.twitter.com/jpeKrHA1sj
— Nate Tice (@Nate_Tice) September 6, 2024
This Chiefs team, of course, has a number of entrenched advantages. Mahomes is Mahomes. Andy Reid is as good a coach as there is in the NFL. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo has quietly put together a potential Hall of Fame career as a defensive coordinator, helping the Giants topple the 18-0 Patriots and then winning three rings with Kansas City (he is the first coordinator to win four Super Bowl rings, which apparently means he can call timeouts). Then you add in Brett Veach as GM, and no other team in the league has this kind of stability.
The Ravens have had three defensive coordinators in four years. The Bills have changed offensive and defensive coordinators in the past two years. The Bengals just lost offensive coordinator Brian Callahan. The 49ers staff is poached as much as any NFL team. And so while it’s easy to point to Mahomes as the biggest reason for the Chiefs’ sustained success, they actually have advantages everywhere else, too.
Baltimore, meanwhile, was out of sorts for much of Thursday night. Things started out promising: The Ravens’ opening drive showed the thesis of their offseason. Baltimore lost the AFC championship game in January after giving their running backs just six carries—the fewest in any game in Ravens franchise history. So this spring, the Ravens signed Derrick Henry, who has the most carries in the NFL since 2018, and gave him five—including one that ended in a touchdown—on the opening drive. That drive even featured a Jackson read-option that made it look like the Ravens would be a problem all year. Turns out they were not much of a problem the rest of the night.
Baltimore was unable to block Kansas City. The Ravens lost an AFC-high 15 free agents this offseason, and it showed, especially on the offensive line. Right tackle Morgan Moses and both starting guards, Kevin Zeitler and John Simpson, are gone. And in the first half alone on Thursday, three Ravens drives ended because of poor blocking. Jackson was constantly under pressure during his dropbacks. And the Ravens were penalized for multiple illegal formations.
Stanley said he was looking at how the Chiefs tackles were lining up and he couldn’t understand why Ravens were getting called and KC wasn’t. He’s calling for accountability with refs https://t.co/kZetTaxS1g
— Jeff Zrebiec (@jeffzrebiec) September 6, 2024
Baltimore tried to fill its holes on the O-line via a few off-the-wall options: Rookie Roger Rosengarten at right tackle, who blindside-blocked for a lefty QB in college, making him a potential draft steal; right guard Daniele Faalele who, at 6-foot-8 and 380 pounds, is quite literally the largest person to ever play guard in the NFL; and left guard Andrew Vorhees, a highly touted 2023 prospect whose draft stock cratered when he tore his ACL at the combine. The Ravens snagged Vorhees in the seventh round last year and he made his NFL debut Thursday. Together they form something of a patchwork experiment that Baltimore hoped could protect Jackson this season. That experiment largely failed on Thursday.
Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones bullied Rosengarten to force a fumble. When the Ravens started doubling Jones, fellow Chiefs pass rushers George Karlaftis and Tershawn Wharton won their one-on-ones. By the end of the game, Jones was literally pointing at individual offensive linemen and telling his teammates to swap spots with him like a guy in pickup basketball yelling “He can’t guard me” and making everyone clear out for an iso.
The Ravens clearly know they cannot block. Jackson’s average depth of target in the first half was basically a yard and change—meaning Lamar’s average throw in the first half traveled within 2 yards of the line of scrimmage. (For context on how sad that is, no qualified passer on record has dropped below 5 air yards per throw across a season).
Baltimore’s defense wasn’t in much better shape. It lost linebacker Patrick Queen to the division-rival Steelers and safety Geno Stone to the division-rival Bengals this offseason, plus defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald to the Seahawks and defensive line coach Anthony Weaver to Miami. And whereas the Ravens held Mahomes scoreless in the second half of the AFC championship game, the defense had a number of lapses on Thursday night, suggesting it could be in for a tough transition in 2024.
So Lamar was left to clean up the mess. And he did virtually everything he could, completing 26 of 41 passes for 273 yards and a score while adding 16 carries for 122 yards (!) on the ground. But it wasn’t enough.
The good news for Baltimore is that the offensive line issues should improve over the season. (Not to mention the fact that Likely emerged as a potential star on Thursday, finishing with nine catches for 111 yards and a touchdown.) The bad news is that it’s hard to look at this Ravens team and think it can be better than last year’s squad, which beat the playoff teams on its schedule by more than 100 combined points—a feat that had been done previously only by the 2007 New England Patriots.
Now the Ravens look a little worse, the Chiefs look a little better, and Ravens fans are going to wonder whether they missed their window. They can join the club.
