The NFL may not be a meritocracy at an organizational level, but the playoffs often are. Inarguably, the four best teams made the Final Four for the Championship round as the Chiefs, Bills, Packers, and Buccaneers all ranked inside of the top-5 teams in points scored per drive. All four were also top-6 in point differential. All of this sets up for two close, great games on tap. I can’t wait.
Here are all the stats and info you need to know before you set your One and Done picks, Showdown rosters, and make bets:
Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Green Bay Packers
Buccaneers Stat-Pack
The Bucs’ have been underdogs just four times this season: Saints (+2.5) last week, Chiefs (+3.5) in Week 12, and Packers in Week 6 (+3), and Saints in Week 1 (+4).
Tampa is 3-1 ATS as underdogs this season.
Each of the Bucs’ last five games have combined to score 50 or more points between both teams.
Tom Brady’s teams now have an unreal 32 playoff wins, which is exactly double the career total of Joe Montana (16), who is second all-time.
Brady has thrown for multiple passing scores in 12 of his last 13 games dating back to their Week 6 game against the Packers.
With Antonio Brown limited because of an injury last week, Chris Godwin easily led the team in targets (7) and just narrowly missed on a huge game with a dropped TD in the endzone.
Mike Evans has now seen five or fewer targets seven times this season, including three times over the last six games.
Leonard Fournette out-snapped Ronald Jones 49 to 21 in the Divisional Round.
Fournette ran 23 routes to Jones’ 4 last week.
With Rob Gronkowski staying in to help block / chip defenders, Cam Brate has actually run more routes than Gronk in the playoffs (38 to 37).
Packers Stat-Pack
The Packers have won four straight home playoff games.
Their last home playoff loss was in 2013 to the 49ers, who went on to narrowly lose to the Seahawks in the Championship Round.
Aaron Rodgers’ passer rating was 91.6 or better in every game this year… except for one (35.4 rating in Week 6 against Tampa).
Tampa Bay blitzed Rodgers on 49% of his dropbacks in Week 6 and Rodgers completed just 6 of his 17 attempts for 63 yards, 0 TDs, and 2 INTs when blitzed.
In his 16 other games, Rodgers’ passer rating against the blitz was 117.5 — which ranks fourth-best behind Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott… and Mitch Trubisky?!
Green Bay has scored 30 or more points in nine of their last 12 games since Week 6.
The Bucs’ ended the season giving up 20 fantasy points per game to receivers that line up out wide, which was second-most only behind the Seahawks (21.8 FPG).
Even though the Packers offense crashed and burned in Week 6 against the blitz, Davante Adams still hit his floor range of outcomes with 6/61 on 10 targets.
Robert Tonyan hasn’t seen more than 5 targets in a game since Week 8.
Allen Lazard tied a season-high in targets last week with 8.
With all of their running backs healthy last week, Aaron Jones led the team in snaps (63%) followed by Jamaal Williams (37%) and A.J. Dillon (12%).
Jones has now scored 5 touchdowns in three career playoff games.
Buffalo Bills at Kansas City
Bills Stat-Pack
- Josh Allen’s 12.5 fantasy points last week tied a season-low.
- Allen averaged 25.3 FPG across his 10 previous starts before last week.
- The Chiefs have allowed 19 or more fantasy points to QBs in seven of their last 10 games.
- Stefon Diggs has caught six or more balls in 15-straight games.
- In this span, Diggs has averaged 21.2 fantasy points per game and never dipped below double-digits in a single game.
- This year, the Chiefs allowed the second-fewest fantasy points per game to receivers (30.3). Only the Rams were better (27.9).
- Allen’s target distribution in the playoffs is: Diggs (20), John Brown (15), Cole Beasley (8), and Gabe Davis (8).
- The good news: Devin Singletary played on a bell-cow-like 84% of Bills’ snaps last week without Zack Moss (ankle).
- The bad news: Singletary only got 7 carries because the Bills went 69% pass-heavy on early downs against the Ravens.
- The Chiefs pass defense has really struggled on early downs recently, giving up a 113.3 passer rating on first and second downs over their last five games. This ranks fifth-worst in this span (includes regular season).
Chiefs Stat-Pack
- The Chiefs widest margin of victory over their last eight wins is six points.
- In this span, the Chiefs have outscored their opponents by an average of just 4 points per game.
- In the Chiefs last four losses with Mahomes starting over the last two seasons, the opposing team needed 40, 35, 31, and 19 points to win. (Tyreek Hill was out in the game that the Chiefs lost 19-13 to the Colts last season).
- Patrick Mahomes owns the best passer rating (106.6) among QBs with 200 or more attempts in the playoffs all-time.
- Travis Kelce has caught 8 or more balls in nine straight games.
- Kelce has gone over 80 yards or scored in every game in this span.
- In this stretch, Kelce has averaged 24.1 fantasy points per game and scored 20+ eight times.
- No team allowed more receptions per game to tight ends during the regular season than the Bills (5.8 per game).
- It’ll be interesting to see if the Chiefs rely on the run again against the Bills like they did back in Week 6 when they abnormally went away from their pass-heavy ways. In that game, Andy Reid called a whopping 46 runs to just 27 passes.
- Reid used the run game to expose the Bills' weakness on defense when they went into their 11-personnel (1RB, 1TE, 3WR) sets. When the Chiefs had 3 wide receivers on the field, they averaged 5.4 yards per carry and generated eight first downs on 15 carries.
- Clyde Edwards-Helaire ended the game with a monster 169 scrimmage yards on 30 touches.
- Darrel Williams out-snapped Le’Veon Bell 54 to 11 last week.
