First TD Bets — Wild Card Monday Slate
Alex Christenson
You have multiple factors to consider when doing NFL power rankings, especially this late in the season. One line of thinking: If you were starting a season from scratch, which team would be the best? Or … Who is peaking right now?
For example, in baseball, the Rangers won the 2023 World Series despite being the American League 5 seed and tying for only the sixth-best record in baseball. Maybe for the full season, they weren’t the best team. But midway through the playoffs, the Rangers were undefeated, sweeping the Rays and Orioles out of the postseason and leading the Astros 2-0 and heading home. If you were starting from scratch for the season, maybe the Rangers weren’t your No. 1, but if you were picking for that specific moment, it was impossible to take anyone else.
That’s the task of our NFL power rankings, and it helps explain why our individual rankings all look very different from one another this week. Which brings us to the rankings heading into the Conference Championship Round. We are only considering teams still active in the playoffs, so there are only four teams to vote on for our voters (DVOA, plus our own Marshall Gershon, Mike Randle, Daniel Kelley and Dane Martinez, with DVOA the decider in case of a tie) and longer thoughts on each team. Rankings are fun, of course, but they are also key for bettors. Check out our NFL Betting Model with the latest data, and our experts put all their top bets into the NFL Bet Tracker.
Check out the team-by-team rankings below, and then at the bottom you can view the full voting breakdown.
NFL Power Rankings Through the Divisional Round
1. Kansas City Chiefs (Last Week: 4, Average Score: 1.8)
Divisional Round: Beat the Texans 23-14
Conference Championships: vs. Buffalo
The Chiefs didn’t come out like dynamite in the Divisional Round. They scored on their opening drive, but given that came after a long return and a Texans penalty, it was a four-play drive that gained exactly -1 yard. Another field goal and a punt later, and the Chiefs were getting close to halftime and up only 6-3. Of course, their key players hadn’t played in more than three weeks after Kansas City locked up the 1 seed before Week 18 and then had a bye in the Wild Card Round. The Texans came a missed extra point shy of tying the game in the third quarter, but the Chiefs closed it out in the fourth for a 23-14 win despite gaining only 212 yards as a team.
The question now is whether the Chiefs are truly inevitable. Because while they are 16-2 for the season (including Saturday’s postseason win), Kansas City hasn’t felt truly dominant all year long, maybe the weakest team of their championship tenure. Going against a Bills team that beat them 30-21 in Week 11 (Kansas City’s only loss when they were trying all season) is a huge test. If they win, they go to yet another Super Bowl and have a chance at the NFL’s first-ever threepeat. If they lose, we get an offseason of “Was that the end of the Travis Kelce-era Chiefs window?”
2. Buffalo Bills (Last Week: 3, Average Score, 2.2)
Divisional Round: Beat the Ravens 27-25
Conference Championships: @ Kansas City
Sunday’s Ravens-Bills game was hyped as the game of the year, and … it let us down a bit. The end was just about as exciting as it could have been, but the overall game was less exciting than we might have been hoping for. Regardless, it was one of the most exciting game setups we’ve had in a while. The Bills escaped with a 2-point win despite being outgained by the Ravens 417 yards to 273. The Ravens turned the ball over 3 times compared to the Bills’ 0 and failed on a pair of two-point conversions. The Bills earned their win without question, but the point is they were extremely close to losing the game and went surprisingly conservative in the second half.
Now, they get the chance to slay their biggest demons. The Chiefs have eliminated the Bills from the postseason in three of the last four years, including an overtime game and another with a 3-point differential. That means Sunday’s AFC Championship game can go one of two ways — either the Bills finally get over the hump and exorcise their demons, or the Chiefs really are Final Destination and the Bills are destined to fall to them every year. The Chiefs are the home team and 1.5-point favorites to open the week, but the Bills are in the best position to beat them in the playoffs they’ve ever been.
3. Philadelphia Eagles (Last Week: 5, Average Score: 2.6)
Divisional Round: Beat the Rams 28-22
Conference Championships: vs. Washington
The Eagles have won their two playoff games by a combined score of 50-32, and other than a few minutes of challenge from the Rams late Sunday, the games weren’t even as close as the scores indicated. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Jalen Hurts has looked like comfortably the worst quarterback of the four we have remaining. He has 259 passing yards in two games, peaking at 131. He has thrown for 2 touchdowns and rushed for 1, and of course the Eagles have Saquon Barkley running wild, but it’s hard to imagine the Eagles can win a Super Bowl with Hurts being essentially a nonfactor as a passer.
Despite them beating the Buccaneers and Lions, the Commanders have a defense that could be the salve for Hurts’ passing woes. He threw for 221 yards against Washington in Week 11, and the Commanders were a bottom-10 defense by DVOA this season. The Eagles enter the week as 5.5-point home favorites against Washington, so that says they should win. But without a better performance from Hurts, it’ll be a hard road.
4. Washington Commanders (Last Week: 6, Average Score: 3.4)
Divisional Round: Beat the Lions 45-31
Conference Championships: @ Philadelphia
This is the team that best exemplifies the example from the intro. The Commanders might not be the team you’d pick if you were starting the NFL season from scratch right now, but there is no hotter team. They’ve won two straight games as road underdogs, including dispatching maybe the best team in the NFL this year 45-31 Saturday when they beat the Lions. Jayden Daniels looks like the best find as a rookie QB in a generation, and the Commanders’ insistence on going for it on fourth down is the single best way to keep their games interesting and exciting. Dyami Brown has looked like a star in these playoffs — after averaging 12.4 yards per game over his four-year career and even 19.3 this year, he’s gone for 89 and 98 yards the last two weeks, giving the Commanders a nice complement to Terry McLaurin.
Now, the Commanders get their latest huge test, heading on the road to Philadelphia to take on their division rival Eagles in the NFC Championship. Washington beat Philadelphia 36-33 a month ago, but that was a game that Jalen Hurts left with a concussion in the first quarter and the Commanders didn’t take their first lead until the fourth quarter and needed a touchdown with 6 seconds left to win, so it wasn’t like they blew the Eagles away. The Eagles beat the Commanders in Week 11, but that was during the team’s midseason, possible-Daniels-playing-with-a-rib-injury stretch, so there are grains of salt surrounding both games these teams have played. The rubber game, with a spot in the Super Bowl on the line, could be our latest game of the year.
Check out the full voting below.
