Ralph Vaciano
NFL reporter
The two-time defending Super Bowl champions will play next weekend. They will face a team that has been out of the playoffs three times in the past four years. The NFL’s Final Four will also feature a potential MVP (Bills quarterback Josh Allen), a likely NFL Rookie of the Year (Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels), and a 2,000-yard running back (Philadelphia’s Saquon Barkley) who Should be an NFL offense. Player of the year.
In other words, next Sunday’s conference championship will be filled with three of the best teams in the NFL (the Kansas City Chiefs, the Philadelphia Eagles, and the Buffalo Bills), and perhaps the most surprising, most exciting, and best-storyed team (the Washington Chiefs). There should be an exciting doubleheader next Sunday, and perhaps an even better Super Bowl LIX two weeks after that.
Here’s a look at the matchups in the two star-studded conference championship games:
NFC
6. Washington leaders at 2. Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles have had their eyes on this matchup and more since their collapse at the end of last season. This has been the reason for every move they made in the offseason. They felt it was inevitable from the moment they learned Saquon Barkley was on board.
So they expected to be here. The NFL expected them to be here. It felt like their fate.
But Washington’s leaders? No one saw them coming – or at least no one but them.
The rookie leaders are crashing the party in a Final Four game, which is an apt description since this entire season has felt like a celebration for them. They’ve been celebrating everything since Josh Harris bought the team from Dan Snyder, then hired general manager Adam Peters and head coach Dan Quinn, and drafted quarterback Jayden Daniels.
Everything this series has touched in the past year has turned into absolute gold.
It was clear all season long that they had built a strong foundation and that the future of Washington football was finally bright. But no one thought the future could actually be now. How can anyone deny that anymore, after what they did against the Detroit Lions on Saturday night? Daniels became the first rookie quarterback in NFL history to reach 275 yards (299) and 50 yards (51) in a playoff game. He also helped the Leaders’ offense reach 481 yards while their defense forced five turnovers in a 45-31 divisional round win.
The young team from DC feels like they can beat anyone now. And they may be right.
But the Eagles could have their biggest test ever for this young team. Daniels doesn’t look too big right now. He will certainly be remembered for his five-game performance when they beat the Eagles in Washington 36-33 on December 22. But it works against history because no quarterback has ever led his team to a Super Bowl in his rookie year.
To do that, he may have to carry a defense that may be particularly vulnerable to the Eagles’ offense. The Leaders ranked 30th in run defense in the regular season, giving up 137.5 yards per game on the ground. And they didn’t exactly solve this problem in the playoffs. They gave up 201 yards to Detroit on Saturday night.
The Leaders were also unable to stop Barkley in any of their regular season games. He ran for 146 yards and two touchdowns in the first game (a 26-18 Eagles win in Philadelphia) and 150 yards and two touchdowns in the second. And of course, he’s red hot right now, coming off his record-tying 205-yard performance on Sunday in a 28-22 win over the Rams.
The Eagles are also 14-1 since the start of October, with their only loss coming in that game in Washington. But the Leaders are also impressive, riding a seven-game winning streak to their first conference championship in 33 years. So perhaps the first full-fledged NFC East Championship game since the then-Washington Redskins lost to the New York Giants in the 1986 season was completely unexpected.
But the way these teams play, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise at all.
Asian Federation
2. Buffalo Bills at 1. Kansas City Chiefs
This is the game the Buffalo Bills wanted all along.
In their quest for their first Super Bowl appearance since the 1994 season and their first championship ever, they always knew they would have to get past the Kansas City Chiefs to get it. The Chiefs have become the Bills’ nemesis, having knocked them out of the playoffs in three of the past four seasons.
They are the thorn in Buffalo’s side and the big hurdle the Bills knew they had to climb.
So when they held off the Baltimore Ravens 27-25 on Sunday — thanks to a two-point conversion drop with 1:33 to go by Ravens tight end Mark Andrews — the Bills finally got what they always wanted. They have a chance to exorcise their demons for real. They got a measure of satisfaction by beating the Chiefs 30-21 during the regular season, but that was in Buffalo and back in mid-November. This will be in front of Chiefs fans with everything on the line.
The Bills are certainly strong enough to prevail in the end. Quarterback Josh Allen played like an MVP all season and threw for 262 yards and ran for another 55 yards in that game against the Chiefs. The Bills defense kept Patrick Mahomes in check, holding him to 196 yards (albeit on three touchdown passes) and sacking him twice.
The bigger question is about the Bills’ mental toughness and whether the Chiefs are in over their heads at this point. There’s no NFL team more battle-tested than the Chiefs, and they’ve proven that all season by winning 11 games by one score. They know how to beat close teams, and they know how to beat the best teams in the postseason.
But are the bills? They will find out.
However, despite the testing of the Chiefs – who are not only two-time defending champions, they have also won the AFC title four times in the past five years – there is certainly a sense that, despite their gaudy record, they are more vulnerable this season than they have been in any season. time during their dynasty. The downside to winning all those close games is that a lot of them were a lot closer than they should have been.
But are they really at risk? Well, the Chiefs couldn’t get past the Texans in the divisional round on Saturday. They won 23-14, so the game wasn’t technically a one-score game, although their lead didn’t grow to 9 until they picked up an intentional safety with 11 seconds left. So, in almost every respect, this was no different than the 11 one-score games they won during the regular season. The Texans were down just one point going into the fourth quarter.
In fact, in some ways this was a bigger struggle for the leaders. They had just 212 yards of offense — their worst season production ever if you don’t count when they rested all of their starters in Week 18. Only 50 of those yards came on the ground.
Meanwhile, the Bills beat a powerful and dangerous Baltimore Ravens team in the divisional round – a team with possibly the best quarterback in Lamar Jackson and the second-most dangerous player in the NFL in Derrick Henry. They both had very mediocre games for them. Of course, so did Allen (who threw for just 127 yards and ran for just 20). It’s not a good sign that the Bills offense ran for less than 300 yards.
Perhaps none of that will matter on Sunday, in a heavyweight bout to be sure. In many ways, these two teams have been warming up to each other since the offseason. And they felt like they were on a collision course with each other all year.
Ralph Vaciano is an NFL reporter for FOX Sports. He spent the past six years covering Giants and Airplanes For SNY TV on New Yorkand before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @Ralph Vaciano.
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