KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If anyone can commiserate with the Kansas City Chiefs on the difficult start they've endured this season, it just might be their opponent on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium: the Baltimore Ravens.
Two of the best teams in the AFC. Two teams that are accustomed to playing for the top seed in the playoffs. Two marquee quarterbacks, two of the league's premier coaches, and two teams with superstars on both sides of the ball.
Two teams that are 1-2 through the first three weeks of the season, too.
The Chiefs finally picked up their first win when they beat the Giants last week, after close losses to the Chargers in Brazil and the Eagles in a Super Bowl rematch. The Ravens lost a nailbiter to the Bills in Week 1, rebounded to beat the Browns, then gave up 17 points in the fourth quarter of a 38-30 loss to the Lions on Monday night.
“Nobody's playing perfect football. It's early in the season,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “We're playing some good football teams. That's a good thing, because that forces you to be your best. You can't worry too much about any kind of record or anything like that at this point. It's a long season. A lot of games to be played. But what kind of team we become is really the important thing right now, and that's really what we're focused on.”
That's easy to say now. Might be a whole lot tougher should the Ravens be 1-3 by Sunday night.
Then again, the Chiefs could be staring at the same fate. They haven't lost three of their first four games in a decade, though in that case they bounced back from a 1-5 start in 2015 to run off 10 straight wins to finish the regular season, and added a playoff win over the Texans before finally losing again to the Patriots in the divisional round.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who wasn't even in the league yet back then, thinks that kind of turnaround has already started this season. Kansas City muddled through a pedestrian first half in New York last Sunday but hit its stride for the first time all season in the second half, ultimately pulling away for a 22-9 victory at the Meadowlands.
“Obviously, there's things here and there we have to work on,” said Mahomes, who will have wide receiver Xavier Worthy back for the first time since Week 1, “but more than anything, the guys are putting in the work during the week.”
The Ravens and Chiefs are accustomed to playing games with high stakes, such as that 17-10 victory by Kansas City in the AFC title game in January 2024. And while there are still plenty of games left in the season, given the precarious record that both are carrying into Sunday's game, the stakes seem just as high as ever for their Week 4 matchup.
“You can’t bring what happened back whenever to this year. We’ve just got to lock in on what’s ahead right now,” Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson said. "Just getting better in practice, watching film on those guys, watching ourselves, and scouting ourselves, and just get after it come Sunday.”
—