• The Los Angeles Rams will raise their banner at the NFL’s opening night.
• They’ll face the Buffalo Bills on Thursday, September 8.
• Quarterback Josh Allen says it’ll be an “interesting feeling” to play under the banner of the defending Super Bowl champs.

The first Sunday of the 2022 regular season will get underway in seven days. But first, on Thursday, September 8, when they meet the Buffalo Bills, the defending champion Los Angeles Rams will hoist their Super Bowl banner at the NFL’s opening night.

“Going to play the defending Super Bowl champs and watching them raise their banner, that’ll be an interesting feeling for sure,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen told reporters Sunday.

“And I’ve talked to a few people who have played and coached in this game before, and just really the unanimous thing that they were talking about was it feels like playoff atmosphere. So, we got to understand that going in, not get too high, not get too low. Understand the flow of the game and just try to put our best foot forward.”

The Bills suffered an incredible heartbreak at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs the last time Josh Allen played in a real playoff situation after the two teams combined for 25 points in the final two minutes of an AFC divisional fourth quarter for the ages.

With 13 seconds remaining and behind by three, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the team moved 44 yards in three plays to set up Harrison Butker’s 49-yard game-tying field goal. In overtime, Kansas City won the coin toss, and Allen never touched the ball.

When asked if seeing Los Angeles hoist a Super Bowl banner at the start of a new season may make him wonder “what if,” the fifth-year quarterback shot the idea down.

“I mean you can get lost in that, but our goal is moving forward and focusing on Week 1 and this season,” Allen said. “Again, it starts Thursday night. You can’t live looking in the past. We gotta focus on what’s ahead.”

Despite the defeat—and possibly in part because of the motivational impact of failing in such a heroic effort—many believe Buffalo’s future lies in ultimately breaking through to the championship game.

Twelve of the 25 analysts who recently predicted the Super Bowl on NFL.com have the Bills winning the Lombardi in February.

Allen won’t be staring in the rearview mirror, and he won’t be looking too far forward on the way to this year’s destination, no matter how the Bills manage to negotiate the hoopla.

“It’s Week 1 of a long season,” Allen said about facing the Rams. “It’s one game, and we’re looking forward to playing this game, but it’s not going to make our season. The ultimate goal is to win the Super Bowl, and you have to take it week by week.”

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