Welcome to Season 105 of the National Football League. Bill Belichick is gone but lurking, turn signal on, waiting for a top position to open up in 2025. Andy Reid is the active coaching GOAT, so great that he’s gunning for a first Super Bowl three-peat and his fourth title in six years and still hasn’t won the NFL Coach of the Year award as a Kansas City Chief. And don’t look now, but the Chicago Bears, also in their 105th season, may have found their first long-term franchise-worthy quarterback since Sid Luckman arrived 85 years ago in No. 1 overall draft pick Caleb Williams.

Or not. We’ll see soon enough, Chicago.

It all starts Thursday night in Kansas City. Again. The Chiefs play the Baltimore Ravens and reigning NFL MVP Lamar Jackson in a rematch of last season’s AFC Championship game, won by Patrick Mahomes and his Chiefs 17-10 in Baltimore.

The action continues with a game on Friday night. Yes, the NFL giant doesn’t want you to look away long enough to watch high school football, as it travels to South America for the first time as the Packers play the Eagles in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

In total, there are 544 regular season games, 12 more postseason games, some exciting new kickoff rules, and plenty of controversies and exciting finishes before we arrive in New Orleans on February 13 for Super Bowl LIX.

Why not? Reid, Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the 2023 Chiefs looked about average as they slogged through the regular season at 11-6. Yet a second straight NFL season ended with Mahomes and company pulling off a comeback victory in the Super Bowl. Star forward L’Jarius Snead is gone, traded to Tennessee, amid Steve Spagnuolo’s suffocating defense. And Kelce turns 35 during the season. But the reigning NFL dynasty also gave Mahomes a pair of big receivers in Marquise “Hollywood” Brown, who is ruled out of Week 1 with an injury, and first-round draft pick Xavier Worthy. Only twice in the first 104 NFL seasons has a team won three consecutive championships. The Packers did it from 1929-31, before there were playoff games; and 1965-67, winning the 1965 NFL championship and then the first two Super Bowls.

Kyle Shanahan’s current five-year run looks so good that it’s starting to look really bad that his 49ers haven’t gotten over the hump yet. They’ve won 54 games in five years. They’ve been to four conference championships and won two. They’ve nearly won two Super Bowls, but Mahomes made second-half comebacks in the 2019 and 2023 seasons. The 49ers still have Brock Purdy on his rookie deal. But that cap friendliness ends in a few years. And while the NFC isn’t exactly loaded, the Eagles have paired Saquon Barkley with Jalen Hurts in an attempt to bounce back from last year’s bizarre late-season slump and get back to the Super Bowl, which they also lost to Mahomes two years ago. And, oh yeah, let’s not forget the Detroit Lions led the 49ers by two touchdowns in San Francisco with 30 minutes left in last year’s NFC title game.