The Super Bowl bracket for the 2024 season is expected to be announced after Sunday’s thrilling conference championship game.
Josh Allen’s No. 2 seed Buffalo Bills will face Patrick Mahomes’ No. 1 seed Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, marking the first time the football world has faced them four times in the playoffs by 30 years old. became the QB pair. The team could beat the Chiefs in the 2024 regular season with Kansas City’s starters playing, but can they finally do it in the postseason?
Meanwhile, in the NFC Championship Game, two NFC East foes will split their regular-season matchups between the No. 6 seed Washington Commanders and the No. 2 seed Philadelphia Eagles. Can Washington shock the world after defeating the Detroit Lions in the divisional round and defeat the NFC’s top two seeds in consecutive weeks?
What surprises could happen in the AFC and NFC title games? Here are some five bold predictions for the NFL’s Final Four.
1. Bills beat Chiefs at Arrowhead to win AFC
The Chiefs (106 wins) and Bills (84 wins) rank first and second in wins since 2018, including the postseason, since Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen became their respective teams’ starting QBs. has been done. Allen and Mahomes will meet for the fourth time in the postseason on Sunday, the second-most playoff matchups between two starting quarterbacks since at least 1950. Only Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have played against each other more times in the playoffs, having faced each other five times. However, Mahomes and Allen are the first starting quarterback pair to meet four times in the playoffs before turning 30, according to CBS Sports Research.
Mahomes, a three-time Super Bowl MVP (two of those wins in the last two seasons), is 21-1 in his last 22 starts, with his only loss coming in a 30-21 loss to the Bills in Week 11. Only when defeated. season. Allen and co. will do it again and ultimately beat the Chiefs in the postseason.
why? That’s because as a team, they don’t commit turnovers like most other teams have in the past. Buffalo’s eight turnovers this season are tied with the 2019 New Orleans Saints for the fewest of any team since 1933. They are also the first team since turnovers began being recorded in 1933 to advance through the first 19 games without losing a turnover battle against an opponent. According to CBS Sports Research, Allen leads the division with the lowest percentage of plays with sacks, fumbles or interceptions in a season (4.2%) since the 1970 AFL/NFL merger.
If the Bills have yet to beat the Chiefs and advance to the Super Bowl, it’s not their quarterback’s fault. Allen has 31 total touchdowns and just six turnovers in his playoff career, including 11 total touchdowns and no turnovers in his last four playoff games. Postseason performance through 12 playoff games in touchdown-to-interception ratio (23-4), interception percentage (0.9%), total yards per game (313.9 yards), and total touchdowns per game. (2.6), making him the all-time NFL postseason leader. ). For Allen, an average day in the postseason is enough for Buffalo to beat Kansas City and advance to the Super Bowl.
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brian diard
2. Mahomes commits AFC Championship turnover, leading to Chiefs elimination
Although not a 2024 NFL MVP finalist, three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes remains the best player in football today. He’s playing like that now. Mahomes has 12 touchdowns and zero interceptions since the Chiefs lost to the Bills in Week 11, including the postseason. In the loss, Mahomes threw two interceptions, tying the most in a single game in 2024.
Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott and others are going to force Patrick Mahomes into another big turnover on Sunday, citing the defense’s adaptability. They entered the AFC divisional round against the Ravens with the league’s worst defensive percentage this season, just 4%. Against Baltimore, he played a season-high 33% of the defensive snaps in the base defense and was limited to 84 yards rushing after allowing 199 yards to Derrick Henry in Week 4.
They also changed their pass coverage trends against two-time NFL MVP Lamar Jackson. According to CBS Sports Research, the Bills blitzed Jackson on 48.4% of his dropbacks last week, despite the NFL’s seventh-lowest blitzing percentage in the regular season (20.9%), which is the Bills’ highest blitzing rate since 2022. It was the highest blitz achievement rate in the game. Something unexpected will happen in Kansas City on Sunday, and Buffalo’s defense will force Mahomes into a costly turnover.
3. Hurts’ six-game playoff streak without an interception ends.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts has totaled 13 playoff touchdowns (seven passing, six rushing) and two interceptions in seven career playoff starts. He hasn’t thrown a postseason interception since his first career playoff start in the 2021 postseason against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That means he has started the playoffs with six straight games without an interception. This is the second-longest postseason streak by a quarterback since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, behind only Patrick Mahomes’ seven-game streak.
He plans to throw one Sunday afternoon against a Commanders defense that upset the top-seeded Lions five times in the NFC divisional round. Washington had the third-best pass defense in the NFL during the regular season, allowing 189.5 passing yards per game. Commanders’ 2024 second-round pick cornerback Mike Sainristil’s 71.3 passer rating against primary defenders was 16th best in the NFL among 39 players targeted at least 80 times. This postseason, in the two games he played, he had two interceptions from Lions quarterback Jared Goff and lowered that number to 27.1 on eight targets, the most from Houston Texans cornerback Derek Stingley.・Along with Junior, this is tied for the most playoffs. Commanders’ second-round pick, safety Quan Martin, outperformed him with a 16.7 passer rating as the primary defender covering two targets, despite a much smaller sample size. Goff’s interception.
Hurts’ mobility has been hampered somewhat by a divisional round knee injury, so Philadelphia could require him to stay in the pocket and throw more. This means Washington’s ball-carrying secondary will have a better chance of creating a winning run on Sunday.
4. Bills WR Cooper catches TD in rematch against Chiefs
At the time, the Bills’ acquisition of five-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Amari Cooper from a sinking Cleveland Browns team at the trade deadline felt like a big deal. Cooper totaled more than 1,200 yards receiving for the Browns in 2023, despite Cleveland starting five different quarterbacks.
But his time in Buffalo was relatively uneventful. Cooper started just four games and caught 20 passes for 297 yards and two touchdowns in eight games. In two postseason games, Cooper only had two catches for eight yards on four targets. That’s not great.
In Week 11 against the Chiefs, Cooper caught just two passes for 55 yards, but this time he was up against a Chiefs defense that allowed the fewest points per game (18.2 points) in their previous games. , would break through and catch a touchdown. two seasons.
5. Eagles WR Dotson catches TD against previous team
The Philadelphia Eagles have acquired wide receiver Jahan Dotson, who was selected 16th overall by the manager in the 2022 NFL Draft, and three 2025 fifth-round picks from Washington (one third-round pick in 2025). He was acquired in exchange for a 2025 seventh-round pick). Dotson’s acquisition price in the regular season was not worth it, as Dotson only had 216 total receiving yards on 19 catches with no touchdowns.
However, he caught an 11-yard touchdown pass in the Eagles’ win over the Green Bay Packers in the Wild Card Round. Red-hot Nick Sirianni went to offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and had Dotson put in a play that emphasized the red zone element of the team’s game plan, scorching the division with the wideout’s former team. It wouldn’t be surprising if it was just for the sake of exhaustion. rival.