If the Super Bowl is the best week of the NFL season, Conference Championship Weekend has to be a close second. Of course, the stakes aren’t quite as high as lifting the Lombardi Trophy, but seeing the league’s four best teams battle it out in wars of attrition in front of tense home fans with a trip to the sport’s biggest game on the line is special too. Merely making it to the Super Bowl is an accomplishment in its own right, so the conference title game is a double-edged sword: making it at all is a massive accomplishment, and failing a massive disappointment.
On Sunday, two teams will triumph, and two teams will fail. But not all failures are created equal, and a loser can still over-perform by covering the point spread. It may not feel like a victory for the loser, but a narrow defeat is more encouraging than a 20-point defeat. By the same token, a blowout could give a winner more confidence going into the Super Bowl than a narrow margin.
AFC Championship Game (New England Patriots at Denver Broncos): Sunday, 3 p.m. ET
New England Patriots -4.5 (-112)
This game won’t automatically be a blowout just because Jarrett Stidham is starting for the Broncos in place of Bo Nix. Denver has thrived primarily through its defense, which forced the Buffalo Bills into five giveaways during the Divisional Round, and Ja’Quan McMillan and Nik Bonitto should be just as much of a factor in the AFC Championship Game as they were against Buffalo. Plus, J.K. Dobbins could return in a limited capacity after finishing 14th in the league in rushing yards per attempt during the regular season, which could help make up for Stidham’s decreased mobility vis-a-vis Nix’s.
However, this Patriots team has passed every test it has faced with flying colors. Thriving through the air against the Broncos requires supreme accuracy, and Drake Maye’s completion percentage over expectation was 4.0 percentage points higher than second-place Brock Purdy’s, a larger gap than that between Purdy and 16th-place Matthew Stafford. Plus, as good as Denver’s run defense is, New England recorded 22 touchdowns on the ground — the fourth-most in football — and are the only remaining team with two trustworthy running backs (Rhamondre Stevenson and TreVeyon Henderson) and a mobile quarterback.
With Stidham under center, Sean Payton will probably call a fairly conservative game, emphasizing runs and short passes up the middle. That’s where the Patriots thrive: they allowed the sixth-fewest rushing yards and fourth-fewest rushing touchdowns, allowed fewer rushing and passing yards per attempt than the league average, and missed the fewest tackles. The Broncos were able to beat Buffalo in part because Nix, RJ Harvey, and Jaleel McLaughlin were able to do just enough against a bad Bills run defense, but they won’t have that luxury against New England.
NFC Championship Game (Los Angeles Rams at Seattle Seahawks): Sunday, 6:30 p.m. ET
Los Angeles Rams +2.5 (-110)
The Rams covered the hypothetical 2.5-point spread in both of the teams’ regular-season matchups, winning by two points at SoFi Stadium in Week 11 and losing by one in an overtime thriller at Lumen Field in Week 16. The regular season matters little at this point, and Seattle has definitely looked better in the postseason, but the fact that both games have been decided in the final moment suggests that either team can beat the other. Los Angeles won’t be intimidated by the Seahawks’ dominant victory over a battered San Francisco 49ers team.
The torn ACL that Zach Charbonnet suffered in the Divisional Round will matter. While Charbonnet isn’t as impactful a runner or a receiver than Kenneth Walker III, he’s four inches taller and three pounds heavier than Walker, making him more of a threat in the red zone. Charbonnet’s absence will put more pressure on Sam Darnold, and while Darnold has had a tremendous season, he struggled against the Rams in the 2025 postseason despite arguably having better regular-season stats that season. His turnover-prone nature could be a problem against a team that posted the fifth-most takeaways in football. He threw six interceptions between the two games against Los Angeles and now has to contend with both Quentin Lake and Roger McCreary, neither of whom played in Week 16.
The Rams are only getting healthier. In that Week 16 defeat, Stafford didn’t have either Davante Adams — who led the NFL in touchdown catches — or Tyler Higbee, a critical piece of Los Angeles’ 2021-22 Super Bowl run and the team’s third-leading receiver by yards per game. Without Adams to take some of Devon Witherspoon’s attention away from Puka Nacua, Nacua still recorded 12 catches for 225 yards and two scores in Week 16, and while he’s obviously not expected to top that in the conference title game, he’s a constant threat whose mere presence opens up opportunities for everyone else. Even with all of its injuries, Los Angeles was a controversial two-point conversion away from sweeping the regular-season series and hosting Sunday’s game.
