On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs will face the Arizona Cardinals. Both Patrick Mahomes and Kyler Murray will then start the new season with a lot of pressure. For both of them, a win in week one would be quite important.

Munich – In week one, the Kansas City Chiefs will face the Arizona Cardinals and with that, Patrick Mahomes will face Kyler Murray. Both superstars are under tremendous pressure early in the season for a variety of reasons.

For one, there’s Mahomes, Super Bowl champion and 2020 Super Bowl MVP, 2018 regular-season MVP and four-time Pro Bowler, who has some making up to do after last season. That’s despite taking his team to the AFC Championship Game, where they narrowly lost 24-27 to the Cincinnati Bengals.

New kickoff stops for Patrick Mahomes

Statistically, but also play-wise, Mahomes is coming off arguably his weakest NFL season. The superstar QB might not remember last year’s start to the season fondly in particular. In the first eight games, the 26-year-old produced ten interceptions and lost four of the first seven games with his team.

Mahomes then picked himself up, made fewer mistakes (he threw only three interceptions in the rest of the regular season) and reached the playoffs with a record of twelve wins and five losses. The Chiefs certainly don’t want to have another messed-up start to the season this year.

After the loss in the AFC Championship Game, the next setback followed in the offseason. In a relative surprise, the team traded Mahomes’ favourite receiver Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins. Instead, the playcaller now throws his passes in the direction of ex-Steeler JuJu Smith-Schuster, ex-Packer Marquez Valdes-Scantling and rookie Skyy Moore. New kickoffs, then, for one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks.

Troubled offseason for Murray and the Cardinals

On the other hand, there’s Murray, a 2018 Heisman Trophy winner, 2019 Offensive Rookie of the Year and two-time Pro Bowler who reached the NFL playoffs for the first time in his young career last season. However, he suffered a crushing 11-34 loss to the eventual champion Los Angeles Rams in the Wild Card Round.

In the offseason, things got loud around Murray. The 25-year-old removed all references to the Arizona Cardinals from his social networks in the meantime and is even said to have called for a trade. After long negotiations, the franchise rewarded him with a new contract that could pay him around 230 million US dollars from the 2024 season.

But that was not the end of the story. For a “homework clause”, which was first enshrined in the contract and then removed after negative reactions, and which was supposed to force Murray to prepare individually for upcoming opponents, also damaged the reputation of the young quarterback.

Kyler Murray needs to take the next step

So the pressure is on Murray. To make matters worse, he will have to do without his best wide receiver for the first six games. DeAndre Hopkins was suspended for allegedly ingesting performance-enhancing drugs and won’t be available until later in the season.

As a short-term replacement, the Cardinals signed the speedy Marquise “Hollywood” Brown on draft day, but he also made headlines off the field during the offseason.

So both Mahomes and Murray have an exciting start to the season ahead of them. Both teams have what it takes to reach the playoffs, but are not among the absolute title favourites. However, if Mahomes can get his form from the past few years back on the field consistently and Murray takes the next step in his fourth NFL season, both could also make more of a splash in the postseason.

A win in week one would be important for both quarterbacks and teams, as the Los Angeles Chargers (against the Chiefs) and Las Vegas Raiders (against the Cardinals) don’t really have any easier tasks waiting in the second.