Super Bowl preview? Bills, Von Miller to open NFL season on Thursday Night Football at Rams

As has been rumored ever since star edge rusher Von Miller signed a free agent contract with the Buffalo Bills in March, his new team will indeed be the visitor against his old team, the Los Angeles Rams, in the NFL’s traditional season opener.

The game will be Thursday, Sept. 8 and will be shown on NBC with an 8:20 p.m. kickoff from SoFi Stadium. The rest of the schedule will be announced at 8 p.m.

For close to two decades, the league has given the defending Super Bowl champion the honor of hosting the first game of the new season, usually on the Thursday of Week 1.

It’s not always a great matchup, but this one certainly is and the NFL recognized that.

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The Rams, with the help of Miller who joined them in a midseason trade from Denver, defeated the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl 56 and Los Angeles will again be one of the Super Bowl favorites in the NFC in 2022.

The Bills are considered one of the Super Bowl favorites on the AFC side, and it just so happened that the Bills and Rams are playing each other this season due to the 17-game schedule which debuted last year.

When the 17th game was added, the NFL had to create a new wrinkle to its schedule format. The 17th game will always be against a team from the other conference that finished in matching positions in their respective divisions.

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Last season the Bills, who won the AFC East in 2020, played the entire NFC South as their crossover division, and their 17th game matched them against 2020 NFC East division winner Washington.

This year the AFC East-winning Bills are playing the entire NFC North, and the rotation calls for them to play the first-place team in the NFC West which was the Rams.

This fortuitous situation presented the NFL the opportunity for a blockbuster of a season-opener pitting two Super Bowl contenders, with the backdrop of Miller playing against his old team, and a quarterback duel between Buffalo’s Josh Allen and Los Angeles’ Matthew Stafford.

With the Bills heading to Los Angeles in Week 1, that means the Bills’ home opener, as previously announced, will be the Week 2 Monday night game against the Tennessee Titans at Highmark Stadium.

In 2020, as part of the regular inter-conference divisional rotation, the Bills and Rams met at an empty Highmark Stadium due to the pandemic and it became a classic 35-32 Week 3 victory for the Bills.

They jumped out to a 28-3 lead midway through the third quarter, then collapsed and fell behind 32-28 with 4:30 left to play.

However, Allen put together an 11-play, 75-yard drive that ended with his game-winning three-yard touchdown pass to Tyler Kroft with 15 seconds left to play.

That came one snap after a highly questionable pass interference penalty was called on the Rams on a fourth-down Allen incompletion which gave the Bills the chance to win their third straight to open the season.

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Buffalo Bills to open NFL season on Thursday Night Football at LA Rams