The first game of the 2024 NFL season reached a massive audience.
NBC announced that Thursday night’s Ravens-Chiefs game had an average audience of 28.9 million viewers, which made it the most-watched of all the NFL Kickoff games since the league began the tradition of starting the season on a Thursday night.
The viewership increased by 5 percent over last year’s 27.5 million viewers for the Lions-Chiefs opener.
Kansas City was the top local market with a 43.4 local rating and 80 share, which means that 80 percent of all TVs in use on Thursday night in Kansas City were tuned in to the Chiefs. Baltimore had the second-best local viewership with a 24.5 rating and 60 share.
The NFL has proven to be the one television property in America that is immune to the viewership declines associated with cord cutting, streaming and the fracturing of the TV audience. As the election approaches, many Americans may watch news instead of sports, and the league’s ratings could see some drop-off. But 2024 started with a bang for the NFL.
The Ravens’ offensive tackles were flagged for four illegal formation penalties on Thursday night, serving notice to the rest of the league that linemen lining up properly is going to be strictly enforced by NFL officials this season.
Lions coach Dan Campbell said he didn’t watch Thursday night’s game but heard about the penalties and made sure the issue was addressed with his team this morning. Campbell said the Lions were already aware that it had become a point of emphasis and that linemen would get at most one warning before they were flagged, but the penalties against the Ravens made it an issue for the team to address on Friday.
“I made that point this morning because I knew it had come up,” Campbell said on Friday. “They were gonna make a point of that, they’ll warn you once and then that’s it. There are no more. They’ll just start flagging them. So our guys know that and we’ll be ready for it.”
It’s unfortunate for the Ravens that they were the team the officials made an example of, but now every NFL offensive tackle should be well aware that there’s no more cheating back toward the backfield when lining up to pass block. That’s going to get flagged, perhaps multiple times a game.
Tight end Peyton Hendershot has spent only 10 days with the Chiefs and has yet to play his first game with them. He was inactive Thursday night after the trade from the Cowboys.
Hendershot, though, already has made an enemy.
Ravens linebacker Roquan Smith warned Hendershot after the two got into it on the sidelines in the fourth quarter.
“Whoever [number] 88 is, I don’t know who he is, but he better watch himself,” Smith said, via video from the team. “He did a little slick push.
“I’ll see him when I see him.”
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes scrambled for a first down on third-and-three, running out of bounds past the line to gain. Smith gave Mahomes a love tap that sent Mahomes to the ground.
No flag was thrown.
“He flopped. Yeah, he flopped,” Smith said. “That’s why the referees didn’t call it. That was a great no-call by the ref.”
Hendershot, who was not in uniform for the game, came to the defense of his quarterback and shoved Smith. Tempers flared briefly.
Smith finished with seven tackles and an interception, but Mahomes and the Chiefs got the 27-20 win.
Among the storylines in Thursday night’s game between the Ravens and Chiefs was four illegal formation penalties called on the Ravens over the course of the game.
Three of them were on left tackle Ronnie Stanley, who said after the game that he felt officials were trying to make an example out of him to emphasize a crackdown on the calls. Stanley also said that he didn’t feel the calls were being made evenly, but the flurry of flags caught the eye of coaches who are preparing to play this weekend and want to make sure that their team doesn’t wind up picking up a slew of penalties.
“We talked about it in practice,” Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo said during his Friday press conference, via a transcript from the team. “I had two guys on both sides of the line of scrimmage making sure those guys were lined up correctly. Once again, we always talk about we’ll do business as business is being done. So, we’ll see what this crew has for us this week.”
Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski also touched on the subject Friday. He said, via the team’s radio announcer Andrew Siciliano, that “when the league wants something emphasized, you better adjust” and similar messages will likely be shared around the league heading into Sunday.
Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson once said after a loss to the Chiefs that they were his team’s kryptonite. He now says that is not the case.
Asked about the comment after Thursday night’s loss, Jackson interrupted before a reporter could finish the question to say emphatically, three times, that Kansas City is not his kryptonite.
“It ain’t my kryptonite. It’s not my kryptonite. It’s not my kryptonite,” Jackson said.
In fact, Jackson said he believes the Ravens showed they can go toe-to-toe with the Chiefs — and can beat them if they cut down on self-inflicted mistakes.
“The whole game gives me encouragement, because I believe our guys were fighting. Unfortunately there were penalties almost every time we had an explosive,” Jackson said.
Jackson has now started at quarterback for the Ravens against the Chiefs six times in his career, and Baltimore is 1-4 in the regular season and 0-1 in the postseason against Kansas City. The Chiefs may not be Jackson’s kryptonite, but he sure would like to turn his record against them around. He’ll try to earn another chance at them in January.
Ravens outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy had to exit Thursday night’s game with an eye injury. There’s now some more clarity on what happened.
According to Steve Wyche of NFL Media, Van Noy suffered a fractured orbital bone. While Van Noy will be sidelined by the injury, he is still undergoing tests to establish a timeline for his return.
Van Noy was also checked for a concussion during Thursday’s game and was cleared.
Van Noy, 33, re-signed with the Ravens on a two-year deal in early April after spending last season with the club. He registered a career-high 9.0 sacks in 2023, also registering nine tackles for loss, four passes defensed, and a pair of forced fumbles.
Van Noy has recorded 42.5 career sacks, 56 tackles for loss, and 73 QB hits in 143 games for the Lions, Patriots, Dolphins, Chargers, and Ravens.
Last night’s regular-season opener didn’t come down to a one-play, winner-take-all, two-point conversion. If the game hadn’t been played last night, maybe it would have.
After Ravens tight end Isaiah Likely caught a pass at the back of the end zone, the ruling on the field of a touchdown was automatically reviewed. The standard is simple; the ruling on the field stands absent “clear and obvious” evidence to overturn it.
As explained less formally, 50 drunks in a bar must agree that a mistake was made.
Based on the initial replays of the Likely catch, it arguably wasn’t “clear and obvious” that his toe landed out of bounds. It looked like it probably did, but it wasn’t clear and obvious. Only when the last angle came through — with the “NB See It” brand on the screen — was it clear and obvious that the toe hit the white stripe.
That’s one of the realities of playing in a prime-time, standalone game. If this had happened in the No. 5 game on CBS in the 1:00 p.m. ET window, that last, definitive look probably would not have been available. Lesser games have fewer cameras. And thus reduced chances of having the kind of “clear and obvious” evidence to overturn a ruling on the field.
The good news (especially for the Chiefs) is that NBC had an angle that allowed the ruling on the field to properly be overturned. The reality is that not every game enjoys that kind of assistance to the naked eyes of the officials, who are trying to see through flashes and blurs in an effort to get these calls right.
Ideally, every game would have entail a thick blanket of comprehensive camera angles allowing all rulings involving the boundary to be seen with full clarity and specificity. Maybe, eventually, the league will get there.
Last night, the officials got to the right ruling because the game was big enough to merit more cameras than other games would get.
A call by replay officials on the final play of the game took a Ravens touchdown off the board, but calls by officials on the field earlier in the game drew a lot of attention from Baltimore as well.
Left tackle Ronnie Stanley was called for three illegal formation penalties and right tackle Patrick Mekari was called for it once, which wasn’t a huge shock given that officials told teams that the call would be a point of emphasis this season. The Chiefs were not flagged for the infraction at any point in their 27-20 win, however, and Stanley took issue with what he felt was a singular focus on how he was lining up.
Stanley said he plans to ask the league to review the calls because he knows “my helmet was breaking the center’s butt” and that he was “lining up more in front of what I used to do” because of the emphasis on the call.
“The way it was going through the game, I really feel like they were trying to make an example and chose me to be the one to do that,” Stanley said, via the team’s website. “As far as I saw, they weren’t doing it on both sides of the ball. I know that I was lined up in good position a majority of those calls they made.”
Two of the calls came on the Ravens’ opening drive. That possession ended with a touchdown, but Stanley said the calls “hindered” the offense and it will be interesting to see if other teams get hamstrung by a flurry of flags as the opening weekend plays out.
Wide receiver Xavier Worthy was the Chiefs’ first-round pick because they thought he could be a playmaker in their offense and it didn’t take long for Worthy to prove the team right in his debut.
Worthy scored on a 21-yard run in the first quarter to tie the game 7-7 and then struck again in the fourth quarter. Worthy got behind the Ravens defense for a 35-yard touchdown catch on a pass from Patrick Mahomes that put the Chiefs up 27-17 and put them on their way to a 27-20 home win to kick off the 2024 season.
After the game, Mahomes said that Worthy’s presence “opens up stuff” because of the attention defenses have to pay to his speed and lauded the rookie’s ability to handle being in the spotlight.
“He’s so cool, calm and collected all the time,” Mahomes said, via Adam Teicher of ESPN.com. “You never even see the excitement on him, but he goes out there and makes plays. Obviously, we want to continue to use him more and more, but I thought he had a great day today, making big plays and big moments.”
According to NFL Media, Worthy is the fifth receiver to catch a touchdown of 30+ yards and run for a score of 20+ yards in the same game. Chiefs head coach Andy Reid has been involved in four of them — DeSean Jackson did it twice with the Eagles and Tyreek Hill did it once with the Chiefs — and Worthy’s likely going to get chances to add to that total given how quickly he’s made himself at home in the Chiefs offense.
They say football is a game of inches and the ending of Thursday night’s game in Kansas City was a prime example of how that became part of the game.
Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson’s pass to tight end Isaiah Likely on the final play of the game was initially ruled a touchdown, but a replay review showed that Likely’s foot was just barely out of bounds. The call was overturned and the Chiefs held on for a 27-20 win.
Likely said “I take responsibility” when he spoke to reporters after the game and that “next time, I’m going to get my feet down,” but Jackson was not convinced that the officials made the correct call when all was said and done.
“I thought it was a touchdown,” Jackson said, via the team’s website. “I still think it’s a touchdown.”
Jackson had a shot at a touchdown one play before the throw to Likely as well, but a pass into the end zone fell incomplete between Rashod Bateman and Zay Flowers. The pass appeared to be behind an open Flowers, but Jackson said the throw was intended to be for Bateman and the failure to hit either one of them loomed all the larger after the replay review ended Baltimore’s hopes of starting the season with a win.