The NFL is back, with the Baltimore Ravens and defending champion Kansas City Chiefs squaring off in the season-opener next Friday morning (AEST).

Can the Chiefs defy history to become the first team to win three straight Super Bowls?

That is just one of many burning questions ahead of the new season, which will also feature a number of Australians in intriguing situations.

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Australian rookie Tory Taylor is one of the new faces of a Chicago Bears team on a rise, while already established star Jordan Mailata is taking on more responsibility at Philadelphia.

Elsewhere, could Australia have its next big name in the league with one player set to play a prominent role in his team’s success in the 2024-25 season?

All that and more in our first edition of Australians in the NFL ahead of the new season!

Tory Taylor (punter, Chicago Bears)

While the Australian punter was widely expected to be the first punter taken off the board in the 2024 NFL Draft, it seemed like few people had Taylor having his name called in the fourth round.

At least, that is if you go by the reaction to the Bears taking the Iowa punter with the 122nd pick. It was the highest pick used on a punter in five years.

But all the talk from the pre-season suggests Chicago doesn’t just see Taylor as your traditional punter. Instead, the Bears view him as a weapon.

A weapon that they didn’t want to use too much in the pre-season, only giving Taylor three punting attempts in the win over Cincinnati and otherwise resting them in their other games.

Taylor averaged 50 yards per punt but otherwise Bears fans have had to settle for highlights from training camp, and there have been plenty.

Bears GM Ryan Poles said on Hard Knocks that Taylor has a “unique ability and skillset to have a powerful leg to flip the field”.

“I think the biggest thing is we want to make our opponent as uncomfortable as possible,” Poles added.

“He’s so good at pinning the ball inside the 10-yard line. People joke and say he’s like Scottie Scheffler in terms of his ability to place the ball. He has different techniques to do it, so he takes it to a whole different level.”

In case you aren’t familiar with Taylor, he is just the latest success story to come out of Prokick Australia, the punting pipeline founded by Nathan Chapman and John Smith in 2007.

Taylor was a cult hero of sorts at Iowa, and while naturally he was always going to be a fan favourite with his Australian accent and carefree nature, it was his punting prowess that really won them over.

Put simply, Taylor was the offence for the Hawkeyes, who consistently struggled to move the ball down the field and often won games off the back of the Australian’s ability to flip the field.

Taylor, who won the Ray Guy Award last season as the nation’s top punter, averaged 48.2 yards per punt at Iowa in 2023 and pinned 43.1 per cent of his career punts in college inside the 20-yard line.

Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams jokingly said when Chicago drafted Taylor that “you’re not going to punt too much here”, although the Australian had a cheeky message for his teammate on the bench after consecutive three-and-outs against the Bengals.

“I thought you said no more punts. We had three in the first quarter, man,” Taylor said.

“It’s just preseason. I wanted to get you a couple,” Williams replied.

There may be a few early learning curves for Williams and the Bears offence, but as a whole there is plenty of optimism that Chicago will be one of the big risers in the NFL this season.

A lot of that stems from the addition of Williams and receiver Rome Odunze, but there is also plenty of hype for Taylor, with CHGO’s Adam Hoge declaring the Australian punter a “weapon”.

“There is something different about the spin on the ball and we see it in practice every day,” he said on 670 The Score.

“He actually will stand there on the 45-yard line and put these things right in the corner of the field, over and over again and the ball doesn’t bounce into the end zone, it bounces back into the field which is what you want it to do.

“I’m calling him the weapon. It should actually give Caleb Williams and the offence favourable field position for most of the season.”

Special teams coach Richard Hightower even revealed in an interview with CHGO that while plenty of draft experts questioned taking Taylor in the fourth round, the reaction from rival teams was the complete opposite.

“There was no way he was getting to the fifth round,” he said.

“We got angry coaches on other teams saying ‘I can’t believe you guys took him’ … in a good way. … ‘We got it wrong and you guys got it right.’

“So that’s cool when you hear your peers say stuff like that. And kudos to Ryan and his staff because he wouldn’t have lasted to the backend of the fourth and (he) definitely would’ve been gone in the fifth. I got that confirmation from three teams already.”

The 27-year-old Taylor didn’t punt during the Bears’ preseason opener last Thursday in Canton, Ohio, which Hightower called an organizational decision. The Bears held Taylor out because they wanted to prevent opponents from getting an early read on his punting abilities and tendencies.

Taylor can create big hangtime on his punts and even puts some spin on the football – which is different from most punters in the NFL.

Daniel Faalele (offensive tackle, Baltimore Ravens)

While Jordan Mailata has already established himself as one of the premier offensive tackles in the league, Daniel Faalele is an emerging Australian to keep a close eye on this season.

Heading into his third year in the league, Faalele is set to take on added responsibility as he looks to fill the void left behind by veteran Baltimore right guard Morgan Moses.

The pair rotated with each other at the position in the latter stages of the regular season last year as the Ravens played with one eye to the future, looking to give the raw Australian prospect some much-needed reps at the position while learning from an experienced teammate.

The 2022 fourth-rounder, who was more of a developmental player when the Ravens drafted him and a reserve tackle in his first two years in the league, stands at 6-foot-8 (203cm) and 380 pounds (172kg) and is an impressive athlete for his size.

Ravens coach John Harbaugh said earlier in the month that Faalele has been particularly impressive in pass protection, telling reporters the Australian has “done a really good job”.

“He’s been in front of his guy; there’s a lot of technique things,” Harbaugh said.

“His room for improvement is really vast, because he’s so talented, and he’s naturally able to do so many good things.

“When he takes the next step in terms of an urgency in the movement that comes with confidence, you’re going to see a more physical player, because the physicality is there.

“He’s big, and he can move, and he can bend. He’s a powerful man, and he wants to be good. I think the upside is pretty immense.”

It is certainly an upside swing from a Baltimore team that traded Moses to the Jets and let both starting guards walking in free agency, leaving a glaring hole in the offensive line.

The Athletic’s Ravens beat writer, Jeff Zrebiec, described it as a “major leap of faith” from the team in an article ahead of Baltimore’s first preseason game against the Eagles.

The Ravens once again project as a potential Super Bowl contender, but much of their success will come down to if some of the younger players, including Faalele, can step up.

Faalele, who revealed he had been texting former Ravens guard Kevin Zeitler in the summer for advice, said the conversation about making the move to guard started during minicamp.

“That’s when I first started getting position reps at right guard, and from then on, (I was) transitioning my mind (to) playing inside and (knowing) what to expect coming into (training) camp,” he added.

“(I’m) just building confidence each day.”

There may be some growing pains early on and while Faalele has been improving, The Athletic’s Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen questioned whether experimenting with him at right guard was the correct call given the other concerns along the offensive line.

“Right guard is still a huge question,” Mays said on The Athletic Football Show.

“It’s literally a huge question because a huge man is slotted to play that spot right now, and they’re working through that right now. Daniel Faalele weighs like 380 pounds, and it is always going to be a question of how much he can play at that weight.

“And so, it’s going to be trial-and-error, and the fact that we still have these questions on August 12, even if you have confidence in their ability to figure it out, it’s hard not to feel a little bit uneasy about where those things stand.”

“On the Faalele thing, I don’t like that at guard,” Klassen added.

“That feels to the point where he’s just so big that you’re getting diminishing returns on him. He’s literally too big to play guard.”

Jordan Mailata (left tackle, Philadelphia Eagles)

Mailata is locked in as a key part of Philadelphia’s future, having signed a three-year, $66 million ($A97m) extension in April that keeps him with the Eagles through 2028.

At this point in his career you know what you are going to get from Mailata on the field, but still there is always room to grow and it looks like this year the Australian has put an emphasis on taking up more of a leadership role.

It comes after the retirement of Jason Kelce, who Mailata revealed last year was the screensaver on his phone because he is the “epitome of a leader”.

Now with Kelce gone, Mailata has taken it upon himself to set standards at training, calling the team’s offensive line play “unacceptable” after three false starts on the first day of camp.

As punishment, Mailata led the offensive line in gassers, which involves sprinting across the field and touching the opposite sideline with your foot and then sprinting back again.