- The Football Behavior Guide
- Posts
- Conference Championship Picks
Conference Championship Picks
Super Bowl Projection: The Newbie vs. The Growing Legend
Brett Yarris
January 26, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
In partnership with
Table of Contents
Receive Honest News Today
Join over 4 million Americans who start their day with 1440 – your daily digest for unbiased, fact-centric news. From politics to sports, we cover it all by analyzing over 100 sources. Our concise, 5-minute read lands in your inbox each morning at no cost. Experience news without the noise; let 1440 help you make up your own mind. Sign up now and invite your friends and family to be part of the informed.
Jayden Daniels has quickly emerged as perhaps the greatest ROOKIE Quarterback we have ever seen. And his team is on an improbable run to the NFC Championship game.
Patrick Mahomes has quickly emerged as perhaps having the a shot to be greatest Quarterback to ever play. And his team is playing in its 7th consecutive AFC Championship game, every year he has been the starter.
 |  |
If our projections hold true, we will see them matched up in the Super Bowl.
How do we get there?
Skip the Booze, Choose These Chews
Everyone deserves to unwind at the end of the day. But if your relaxation routine leaves you feeling less than your best the next morning, we have a better way.
Just one of CBDistillery’s Enhanced Relief gummies delivers a precise formulation incorporating 5mg of hemp-derived, Delta-9 THC and 75mg of high-quality CBD. Choose our chews, kick back and enjoy body-melting relaxation and mental calm.
Relax risk-free with our 60-day money-back guarantee and save 25% on your first order with code RLX25.
Bills @ Chiefs
Razor Thin Margins
This game is a 50/50 toss up. This SHOULD be the best game of the entire playoffs, and has the best chance of going to overtime. But there is a reason, rooted in behavior science that one of these teams has the slight edge.
Prior to this matchup becoming official, we told you that a hypothetical conference championship matchup between these two projects as a virtual tie after 60 minutes, with a slight 0.11 point edge in favor of Kansas City.
Now, adding in the divisional round data, it STILL projects a virtual tie after 60 minutes, with only 0.26 points seating these two teams on average.
The Chiefs are getting the edge because based on scoring behavior, the Chiefs 12% week to week improvement in score prevention behavior on defense (powered by dominating performances in 5 of their last 6 games) seems poised to bring a potent Bills scoring offense down a bit.
The Bills scoring behavior itself is seeing a slight 2% week to week regression, with their two playoff games being more in line with expectations.
The Bills defense on the other hand, is seeing a week to week 6% regression this season. They are coming an off a week against the Ravens in which they gave up 0.9 points per minute, and could have been higher is Mark Andrews catches the two point conversion.
This against a Chiefs offense that continues to age like fine wine, and is seeing a 4% week to week improvement in their scoring behavior. Just in time for the back end of the playoffs. Each of the last four starts by Patrick Mahomes have hit 0.8 points per minute.
The key to this game will be…
Time of Possession:
For Buffalo to win they need to hit at least 0.7 points per minute AND hold at least 4-5 minute edge in time of possession.
For the Chiefs, they need to protect the football (two interceptions in their first meeting), and have more than 28 minutes of possession time, with a scoring behavior rate of 0.75 points per minute.
In the regular season matchup we projected a 21-20 Chiefs win. The Chiefs offense vs Buffalo defense matchup went exactly according to that projection. The Bills offense benefitted from having the ball 6 more minutes than we projected.
This time around, we expect Buffalo to have the time of possession edge, but not by the 10 minutes they did in that matchup, the biggest gap in TOP for the Chiefs all season.
Final Score Projection:
21-20, Kansas City Chiefs def. Buffalo Bills
Pigeon Pick:
Chiefs ML (-125)
Commanders @ Eagles
Get Your Popcorn
Saquon Barkley is on a scorched Earth run to show how idiotic the Giants were to let him leave. (Still not sleeping?)
Jayden Daniels is scorching the Earth on route to the perhaps the most dynamic rookie QB campaign in the history of the sport.
Oh, and the two teams are fierce divisional rivals. Get your popcorn.
This is the first year since I’ve been running these simulations that both conference championship games have a projected margin of less than one point.
In this case, the projected edge towards the winning team in this one is just 0.93 points, with 57 seconds of outlier time (time not accounted for in either team’s projected time of possession.
For what it’s worth, that outlier time is the equivalent of about one point at the Washington Commanders scoring behavior rate average for the season, crucial that they claim it.
But ultimately, this game is going to come down established behavior. The Eagles defense is the focus for this.
Consistency Matters in the Playoffs
On offense that Eagles were tied for the 3rd most consistent scoring behavior. Defense was a completely different story.
On defense, they were tied for the 6th most inconsistent score prevention behavior. That inconsistency has been directly tied to opponent strength. As with everything, behavior is impacted by the environment you need to behave in.
This has been a staple of the Nick Siriani era. Trey Wingo and I noted it as far back as heading into the 2022 Super Bowl against the Chiefs, and was why I had projected the Chiefs to beat them.
This year, the Eagles defense beat up on bad teams, as they should.
Of the seven times they held opponents to under 0.5 points per minute it was against, in order of their appearance on the schedule:
31st, 32nd, 29th, 23rd, 22nd, 23rd, and 29th ranked scoring behavior offenses.
The one time they did it in the post season, against the Packers, they faced a team without its top two wide receivers, offensive lineman, and a host of other injuries.
They’ve allowed over 0.7 points per minute of possession time seven times, four times allowing 0.9 points per minute or worse.
Those teams were ranked, in order of their appearance on the schedule:
7th, 13th, 3rd, 26th, 4th, 17th, and 4th ranked scoring behavior offenses
The four times they allowed over 0.9 points per minute was against, in schedule appearance order:
7th, 13th, 3rd, and 4th ranked scoring behavior offenses
Those times you see the 4th ranked scoring behavior offense listed, that was the Commanders. In the seven games allowing over 0.7 points per minute, they averaged giving up 0.9125 points per minute.
Simply put, when they face top offenses, they tend to struggle.
Look no further to the last time they played the Commanders. They gave up 1.5 points per minute in a loss, despite a valiant effort from the Eagles offense.
The Washington Offense Continues to be Potent
Inclusive of that last game against Philly, the Commanders have hit over 0.9 points per minute in 5 of their last six games, and over 1 point per minute in three of them.
The defense is what continues to be problematic, allowing 0.8 points per minute or more in seven of their last eight games, including the playoffs.
They have been fortunate to rely on outlier events like turnovers. And they will need it against an Eagles offense that doesn’t turn the ball over, and holds on to it for a long time, but has been mostly league average in their last three games, and in four of their last six.
Expect potential for a high scoring matchup, with the Commanders offense forcing Philly’s offense to play ball control.
Final Score Projection:
24-23, Commanders def. Eagles
Pigeon Pick:
Commanders +5.5 (-110)
Commanders ML (+210)
Super Bowl Matchup Pigeon Pick
Chiefs vs Commanders (+440)
