For better or worse, in sickness and health, to love, honor and cherish, the NFL season is finally upon us.

And they said the marriage wouldn’t last.

Be honest, did you really think that with everything we’ve experienced and endured since Kansas City won the Super Bowl in February we’d be talking football? Were you so certain the NFL would kick off the season on time? Did you believe some teams would be able to have fans attend?

I didn’t.

Heck, I still find it hard to believe the Raiders are actually in Las Vegas. But then I drive by Allegiant Stadium, the team’s silver and black 65,000-seat, $1.9 billion home and I realize this isn’t a dream.

What the coronavirus pandemic has done to sports fans everywhere is plant seeds of doubt. We have questioned whether it was going to happen, if bubble environments would work, would we be able to go to the games again and have something to bet on.

Throw in the social injustice issues and sports becomes even more problematic. Individual athletes and entire teams and leagues opted out temporarily. And you know had the NFL decided to play its preseason, the players were going to boycott one of the games and use their collective voice to weigh in.

Yet here we are. We’re going to have football, beginning Thursday night as the Chiefs begin defense of their championship. We’re going to see sportsbooks across the country with long lines (socially distanced, of course) and people spread out looking to find a seat to watch. And when the early games kick off Sunday, you’ll hear a great roar from fans and bettors to celebrate the return of the NFL.

It’ll look, sound and feel normal. And that’s a good thing. We’ll be arguing about the play calls of coaches, why this quarterback is starting, how come a team didn’t use a time out and all the usual things football fans discuss over the course of a game.

We’ll try to figure out how to string together a winning five-team parlay. We’ll ride the algorithms of in-game wagering, watching a favorite fall behind big, suddenly becoming an underdog, then rallying in the fourth quarter to eke out the win so we can brag to our friends and everyone on Twitter how we were so smart to jump on that team and turn a negative into a positive.

We’ll be tracking our fantasy team lineups, rooting hard for our guys to have productive afternoons and evenings. We’ll be muttering under our masked breath why it takes so long to have the overworked cocktail waitresses get us our next beer in the sportsbook. Those of us who are smart will avoid the long lines at the betting windows and simply whip out our phones, click on the apps and make our second-half wagers.

And when our teams screw up, depriving us of victory and turning our winning bets into losing tickets, we’ll shake our heads and say “Same old (fill in the name of your team here).”

There’s supposed to be 17 weeks of this. Are you cautiously optimistic that will be the case? Will things change in November that would cause the NFL to put the season on hold temporarily? Will there be a COVID-19 outbreak that derails an entire team and forces a change in the schedule?

I’ve said it several times and I’ll say it again — it’s 2020. Expect the unexpected. Nothing should surprise us at this point. But you know what would be a really nice surprise? No surprises. No outbreaks. No boycotts, No disruptions. No incidents. Just have everything go according to plan.

I would be surprised and ecstatic if that happens. Even if it means the Giants go 4-12 as a result. Hey, every marriage has its rocky moments.