Isaiah Likely, #80 of the Baltimore Ravens, attempts to catch a pass in the end zone as Bryan Cook, #6 of the Kansas City Chiefs, defends during the fourth quarter at Arrowhead Stadium.
Photo: Getty Images
One of the glorious things about the 2023 NFL season — one of the primary reasons it set ratings records and was purely enjoyable in a mostly guilt-free way the league is rarely able to pull off — is because it felt, for the first time in nearly a decade, like it truly existed it outside of the real world. Sports is always more fun when we can disconnect it from real life, and last season allowed us that illusion: The pandemic was (essentially) over, there wasn’t an election going on, Tom Brady wasn’t around for everybody to argue about (for that matter, neither was Aaron Rodgers), and no one nearly died on the field. Everybody just got to revel in the sport in all its brutal beauty, and even tell themselves a little love story along the way.
That was never going to last, in the NFL or in life, and during the season opener between the Baltimore Ravens and the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs at home there were little signs that some storms may be on the horizon. First, there were actual storms, lightning around Arrowhead Stadium that delayed the game 45 minutes, 45 minutes of billion-dollar television airtime that NBC spent vamping and apologizing for. Taylor Swift, the queen of the 2023 NFL Season (or was it that the entire NFL was her First Gentleman?), showed up looking somewhat curt after a two-day news cycle that involved allegedly faked “breakup contract” documents from her boyfriend, Travis Kelce (somewhat incidentally, Chiefs tight end and future Hall of Famer). The last time we saw the Chiefs’ winning kicker, he was accusing Joe Biden of murdering babies. Donald Trump was pulling the league — and its signature star, Patrick Mahomes — back into his abyss again. It all felt like a story we had seen before, but a little darker this time.
But, to me, the real symbol of football as a metaphor for and manifestation of America came before the game, when the public-address announcer asked for a moment of silence. Why? “To honor a victim of gun violence.” I had almost forgotten. This was the first major Chiefs event since their Super Bowl parade through downtown Kansas City back in February, when a local radio DJ, celebrating the title with her family, was shot and killed when three men started firing into the crowd. The first NFL game began with a moment of silence for something that happens uniquely, and constantly, in America. I’ll confess, it hit particularly hard because hours earlier I had attended a youth soccer game 25 miles away from Apalachee High School in Georgia, which had also started with a moment of silence to honor the four killed at the school. Two games in the same day, mourning two different mass shootings. It made you wonder if maybe we should just make that moment of silence our new national anthem.
Fortunately — because the sport itself, in the end, always finds a way to deliver — the Chiefs and Ravens, two Super Bowl contenders, played a magnificent game, with Mahomes and Lamar Jackson both showing off the things they can do that no one else on Earth can. It came down to the final play, with the Ravens down 27-20, when Jackson, who had just missed a wide-open receiver the play before, hit receiver Isaiah Likely in the back of the end zone as time expired … only for Likely’s foot to come down just on the out-of-bounds line, giving the Chiefs the victory. It was the perfect NFL ending: Breathtaking athleticism and intense competition being settled by a man staring at a hi-def television screen. It’s both exhilarating and exhausting to realize we’re going to be doing this every week until Valentine’s Day.
The Chiefs are attempting to win their third consecutive Super Bowl, something that has never been done in the NFL, and the league will be formatting itself around that team, and thus Swift, as long as she keeps coming out to games, all season. It was telling that NBC’s hype video to start their telecast and launch the NFL season featured Swift for a long period of time than it featured Rodgers, something that may have irritated some football diehards but I’d argue is a far more pleasant (and far less deranged) use of a national television broadcast. But there is more Rodgers yet to come.
There is more of all of it to come — including an unprecedented Friday night game this week, played in Brazil, of all places, between the Eagles and the Packers — in a season that will take us through in the backdrop of what promises to be one of the most tumultuous and uncertain periods in American history. There will be a game before next week’s presidential debate, and then another mere hours before Election Day (in Pennsylvania no less), then another week of games and storylines in the surely terrifying days and weeks and months afterward, and by the end of the season, we will know where we stand, we will know what happened, even if we’ll have no idea what happens next. The NFL is the signature cultural activity in this country, and it will sit at the center of the nation’s attention during one of the most pivotal periods in its history. The league has one of its most successful seasons ever in 2023, largely because it could serve as a safe space that was cocooned away from what was starting to swirl around it. I’m not sure the cocoon is going to hold this time. The first night of the NFL season featured a fantastic game between two teams playing, already, near the peak of their abilities. You could, for now, lose yourself in its pleasures. But the storm clouds are gathering. Out there, there be dragons. Are you ready for some football? Are you ready for all of it?
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