The NFL returns this week, with both Super Bowl champion Philadelphia and AFC champion Kansas City in action. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)
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Are you ready for some football? The 2025 National Football League season begins play this week with games that feature two of the richest rivalries in the league.
The Dallas Cowboys and the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles open the season in the City of Brotherly Love on Thursday.
The Eagles and Cowboys have played every year since 1961, the Cowboys’ second year in the league and their first in the NFC East when divisions were realigned.
Friday, the NFL returns to Brazil for a second consecutive season when the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers are to meet in Corinthians Arena in Sao Paulo, which hosted the Eagles and Green Bay a year ago.
The Chiefs and Chargers have met at least once every year since 1960, when they were two of the eight founding members of the upstart American Football League, the Chiefs in Dallas and the Chargers in Los Angeles.
A Super Bowl hangover does not typically manifest itself early in the following season for the league champ, despite the extra games played in the previous season and the offseason commitments.
Five of the last seven and eight of the last 11 Super Bowl winners have opened the next season with a victory.
The line swung mightily this week after the Cowboys traded their best defensive player, Micah Parsons, to the Green Bay Packers for defensive lineman Kenny Clark and first-round picks in the next two drafts.
Clark will help now, but the loss of Parsons weakens a Dallas defense that gave up 468 points a game (31st in the league) and 35 yard a game (first-worst).
Some of that obviously had to do with the loss of quarterback Dak Prescott to a season-ending right hamstring injury in Week 8 of 2024, inasmuch as the lack of offense left the defense on the field too long.
Prescott is back now. He was not on the field for either of the Eagles’ blowout wins last season but is 9-4 against them in 13 starts and is 4-1 against the spread as an underdog seven points or more.
Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is 6-11-2 when the Eagles are favored by seven points or more more. The teams have split the last 10 games, both straight up and against the spread.
**The spread:** Eagles -8 1/2
**The money line:** Eagles -450, Cowboys +350
**The total:** 48.5
**The play:** Dallas +8 1/2
(Odds courtesy FanDuel)
Trends collide in the first of two regular-seasons meetings of these storied AFL rivals.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid is 17-9 in regular-season openers and 10-2 since joining Kansas City in 2013. The Chiefs have won 14 of their last 18 openers.
Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh is 5-0 against the spread in his openers, four with San Francisco and last year with Los Angeles.
Reid could tie Bill Belichick (18-11) most wins in a home opener, behind only George Halas (26-12-2), Tom Landry (22-6-1) and Curly Lambeau (21-10-2).
This series has been severely lopsided for more than a decade. The Chiefs have won the last seven, 10 of the last 12, and 19 of the last 22 straight up dating to the 2014 season.
For all the perceived firepower, especially on the Chiefs’ side, the last four games and five of the last six games have landed under the total.
The Chiefs spoiled Harbaugh’s return to the NFL with 17-10 and 19-17 victories a year ago, the latter on a field goal as time expired.
Patrick Mahomes threw for 455 yards with two touchdowns and one interception in the two, when the Chiefs held the Chargers under 300 yards total offense both times.
**The spread:** Chiefs -3
**The money line:** Chiefs -168, Chargers +142
**The total:** -46 1/2
**The play:** Under -46 1/2.