It’s rare that the first game on a schedule is also the most important, but you could reasonably argue that the Baltimore Ravens’ season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs on Thursday is just that.

Of course, the Ravens are looking for “revenge” after a 17-10 loss to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, even if they defeated themselves in that game. Emotions will undoubtedly run high against the team that ended their dream season, but if the Ravens want to leave Kansas City with a win, they’ll have to stay calm and cool.

The question is whether Baltimore can pull off the surprise. According to many experts, the answer to that question is no.

The Ravens’ website collected predictions from 46 experts from seven different media outlets, and only nine of them predicted a win for Baltimore.

Looking at local news, the Baltimore Sun is the most optimistic of all the media outlets surveyed, with three out of five analysts (Childs Walker, CJ Doon and Bennett Conlin) predicting the Ravens will win.

“Normal rules of quality go to waste in a Thursday night opener,” Walker wrote. “Just look at last season, when the Chiefs dragged their feet in a home loss to the Detroit Lions. The Ravens will be eager to face their nemesis and seem unlikely to keep their Derrick Henry-driven running game under wraps this time around. Patrick Mahomes, meanwhile, will start without a full complement of targets. The Ravens will pull the upset in a matchup that won’t tell us much about what might happen when these teams meet again in January.”

On the other hand, all six analysts at The Baltimore Banner believed the Chiefs would defend their home turf.

“This could be a night of rude introductions: Congratulations, Zach Orr. For your first regular-season game as Ravens defensive coordinator, you’ll have to hold off Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes,” writes the Banner’s Jonas Shaffer. “And congratulations, Andrew Vorhees, Daniel Faalele and maybe Roger Rosengarten. For your first career start — either in the NFL or, in Faalele’s case, at a new position — you’ll have to hold off the migraine-inducing pressure packages of Chris Jones, George Karlaftis and Steve Spagnuolo.”

As for the national media, the predictions were overwhelmingly in Kansas City’s favor. Only one pundit from ESPN (Kimberly A. Martin), two from NFL Network (Adam Rank and Marcas Grant), two from CBS Sports (John Breech and Dave Richard), and one from Sports Illustrated (Iain MacMillan) picked Baltimore. In fact, all of the predictions had the game decided by one score, but as the Ravens know, close isn’t good enough.

Whatever the predictions say, we will see what actually happens when the match kicks off at 8:20 PM (Eastern Time).

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