The Kickoff Game was introduced in the 2002 season. From 2004 onward, the defending Super Bowl champion has hosted the Kickoff Game with a couple of exceptions -- in 2013 the defending champion Baltimore Ravens opened on the road because of a conflict with a previously scheduled Orioles baseball game the same day, and in 2019 the defending champion New England Patriots did not play at all in the Kickoff Game as the league instead scheduled the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears for that game to celebrate its 100th season of operation (the Bears-Packers rivalry, featuring two of the league's oldest franchises, is the most-played of all NFL rivalries; the Patriots instead played on Sunday Night Football).