The last time Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson took part in a game, he walked off the field in Baltimore as the Chiefs celebrated another trip to the Super Bowl.
That trip was their fourth in the last five years, so there’s no question who the top dog in the AFC is at the moment. Jackson and the Ravens are going to have to knock the Chiefs off if they want to make it to the quarterback’s first Super Bowl, but Jackson said on Sunday that he’s not putting extra weight on Thursday night’s opener in Kansas City.
“Any game I play in, I feel like it’s a revenge game,” Jackson said, via the team’s website. “I’m not just going to look at this game like a revenge game. Anybody we play, no matter if we’ve beaten them or lost to them in previous years, I just want to win.”
While the playoff loss to the Chiefs adds some extra narrative juice to Thursday’s game, it is still just the first of 17 regular season games that the Ravens will need to get through in order to have any chance of reversing the bitter end to last season. Jackson’s answer shows that perspective, although it’s difficult to imagine knocking off Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in their building wouldn’t be a little sweeter than most regular season wins.