NFL championship games bold predictions: Bills force costly Patrick Mahomes turnover, Eagles WR burns ex-team – CBS Sports
If not listed, please contact your TV provider.The 2024 season’s Super Bowl matchup will be revealed after some thrilling conference championship action on Sunday.Josh Allen’s second-seeded Buffalo Bills facing Patrick Mahomes’ top-seeded Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship game provides the football world the first pair of quarterbacks to face off four times in the playoffs before the age of 30. The Bills were the only team to defeat the Chiefs in the 2024 regular season when Kansas City’s starters played, but can they finally do it in the postseason? The NFC Championship game, meanwhile, showcases two NFC East division foes who split their regular-season meetings in the sixth-seeded Washington Commanders and the second-seeded Philadelphia Eagles. Could Washington shock the world and knock off the NFC’s top two seeds in consecutive weeks after beating the Detroit Lions in the divisional round? What surprise happenings could go down in the AFC and NFC title games? Let’s project a few with five bold predictions for the NFL’s final four. The Chiefs (106) and the Bills (84) rank first and second in wins since 2018, including the postseason, since both Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen became their respective team’s starting quarterbacks. Now Allen and Mahomes are meeting in the postseason for the fourth time on Sunday, which is tied for the second-most playoff meetings by two starting quarterbacks since at least 1950. Only Tom Brady and Peyton Manning had more with five playoff showdowns. However, Mahomes and Allen are the first pair of starting quarterbacks to face each other four times in the playoffs before the age of 30, per CBS Sports Research. Mahomes, a three-time Super Bowl MVP — two of which have come in the previous two seasons — is 21-1 in his past 22 starts with the only loss coming in a 30-21 defeat at the Bills in Week 11 this season. Allen and Co. are going to do it again and finally topple the Chiefs in the postseason. Why? Because they don’t commit turnovers as a team like almost no other team has before. Buffalo’s eight turnovers this season are tied for the fewest by any team since 1933 along with the 2019 New Orleans Saints. They are also the first team since 1933, when turnovers began being tracked, to go their first 19 games without losing the turnover battle in a game against their opponent. Allen has been leading the charge in this department with the lowest rate of plays (4.2%) with a sack, fumble or interception in a season since the 1970 AFL/NFL merger, minimum 500 plays, per CBS Sports Research. Even though the Bills have yet to topple the Chiefs and reach the Super Bowl, it’s not because of their quarterback. Allen has 31 total touchdown to only six turnovers in his playoff career, a stretch that includes 11 total touchdowns and no turnovers in his last four playoff games. HIs postseason performance through 12 playoff games makes him the NFL postseason’s all-time leader in touchdown-to-interception ratio (23-4), interception rate (0.9%), total yards per game (313.9) and total touchdowns/game (2.6). Allen has an average postseason day, for him, which is finally enough for Buffalo to overcome Kansas City and advance to the Super Bowl. Even though he’s not a 2024 NFL MVP finalist, Patrick Mahomes, the three-time Super Bowl MVP, is still the best player in football today. Right now, he’s been playing like it: Mahomes has 12 touchdowns and no interceptions since the Chiefs’ Week 11 loss at the Bills, including the postseason. In that loss, Mahomes tossed two interceptions, tied for his single-game season-high in 2024. Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott and Co. are going to bait Patrick Mahomes into another back-breaking turnover on Sunday because of the adaptability of their defense. They entered the AFC divisional round against the Ravens playing their base defense at the lowest rate in the league this season, just 4%. Against Baltimore, they played in their base defense on a season-high 33% of defense snaps, and they limited Derrick Henry to 84 yards rushing after surrendering 199 to him in Week 4. They also changed their tendencies in pass coverage against two-time NFL MVP Lamar Jackson. Despite blitzing at the NFL’s seventh-lowest rate in the regular season (20.9%), the Bills blitzed Jackson on 48.4% of his dropbacks last week, the Bills’ highest blitz rate in any game since 2022, per CBS Sports Research. Expect the unexpected on Sunday in Kansas City, and Buffalo’s defense forcing Mahomes into committing a costly turnover. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts has 13 total playoff touchdowns (seven passing, six rushing) to 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, meaning he has six straight playoff starts of interception-free football. That’s the second-longest streak by a quarterback in the postseason since the 1970 AFL/NFL merger behind only Patrick Mahomes’ seven consecutive such games. He’ll throw one on Sunday afternoon against a Commanders defense that turned over the top-seeded Lions five times in the NFC divisional round. Washington ranked as the NFL’s third-best pass defense in the regular season, allowing 189.5 passing yards per game. Commanders 2024 second-round pick cornerback Mike Sainristil’s 71.3 passer rating against as the primary defender was the 16th best in the NFL among 39 players who were targeted at least 80 times. This postseason, in two games played, he’s dropped that figure down to 27.1 on eight targets with two interceptions off Lions quarterback Jared Goff, which is tied for the most in the playoffs alongside Houston Texans cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. Commanders second-round pick safety Quan Martin has outperformed him, although on a much smaller sample size with a 16.7 passer rating against as the primary defender in coverage on two targets with an interception off of Goff.With Hurts’ mobility somewhat hampered by his divisional round knee injury, Philadelphia could ask him to remain in the pocket and throw more. That means more chances for Washington’s ball-hawking secondary to generate a takeaway, which they will on Sunday.The trade deadline acquisition by the Bills to acquire five-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Amari Cooper from a sinking Cleveland Browns team felt like a big deal at the time. Cooper totaled over 1,200 yards receiving with the Browns in 2023 despite Cleveland starting five different quarterbacks. However, his time in Buffalo has been relatively uneventful. Cooper caught 20 passes for 297 yards and two touchdowns in eight games played with only four starts. In two postseason games, Cooper has just two catches for 8 yards on four targets. That’s not great. Cooper only caught two passes for 55 yards in the team’s Week 11 win against the Chiefs, but this time around, he’ll break out and catch a touchdown against a Chiefs defense that has allowed the fewest points per game (18.2) across the last two seasons. The Philadelphia Eagles acquired wide receiver Jahan Dotson — the Commanders’ 16th overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft — and a 2025 fifth-round pick from Washington in exchange for three picks (a 2025 third and two 2025 seventh-round selections). Dotson’s acquisition price wasn’t worth it this regular season as he totaled just 216 yards receiving on 19 catches without a touchdown.However, he did catch an 11-yard touchdown pass in the Eagles’ wild-card round victory against the Green Bay Packers. It wouldn’t be mind-blowing if Nick Sirianni, a fiery individual, went to offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and had him put plays designed to highlight Dotson into the red zone component of the team’s game plan just to burn the wideout’s former team and division rival. © 2004-2024 CBS Interactive. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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