The Finest Bets of the NFL Convention Championship Games

Drake Maye’s Patriots or Jarrett Stidham’s Broncos? Seahawks or Rams? These are the smart plays for championship Sunday.

Imagine if I told you before the season that the AFC East and AFC West champions would meet in January with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line. You’d nod, ask whether anyone else in the AFC was ever really going to challenge those two heavyweights, and settle in for another instantly memorable duel between Josh Allen’s Bills and Patrick Mahomes’s Chiefs.

Only the Bills and the Chiefs aren’t here.

For the first time in his career as a starter, the AFC championship game isn’t the Patrick Mahomes Invitational. Instead, we were supposed to get something much fresher. A matchup of two second-year quarterbacks trying to lift their teams to a shocking Super Bowl appearance. Bo Nix’s ankle injury has taken the luster out of the Broncos-Patriots matchup a bit, but that won’t stop Jarrett Stidham from trying to channel his inner 2017 Nick Foles. And it won’t stop the Broncos defense from trying to make life miserable for Drake Maye. 

Yet the AFC championship game serves as the undercard this weekend. The main event is in the NFC, where the league’s two best teams will have their highly anticipated rubber match. 

Let’s dive into these two matchups. All lines are from FanDuel as of Friday morning. 

AFC Championship Game

New England Patriots (–4.5) at Denver Broncos

The hypothetical lookahead line had the Broncos listed as a 1.5-point home favorite. Lookahead numbers aren’t a perfect proxy for true market sentiment, but a 6-point adjustment from Bo Nix to Jarrett Stidham still feels aggressive.

Stidham hasn’t played much over the past three seasons as the backup in Denver, but he’s been in the building and is well-versed in Sean Payton’s offense. And while Nix has been serviceable and clutch in late-game situations, he hasn’t exactly been lighting up defenses. He’s averaging just 6.4 yards per attempt—32nd out of 42 qualified quarterbacks. It’s not unreasonable to think that Payton could get similar efficiency out of Stidham—at least for one game.

But that doesn’t mean the two are interchangeable. The real separator between the two isn’t explosive playmaking, but sack avoidance. Nix owns the lowest sack rate in the NFL at 3.5 percent, while Stidham’s career sack rate of 8.8 percent is more than double that. 

New England’s defense has been getting after quarterbacks this postseason, but that may be because they faced two truly awful offensive lines in the first two rounds. This matchup presents a very different challenge. Denver boasts an elite offensive line that ranks fifth in pressure rate allowed. If you add that to a potentially run-heavy approach and quick passing game, and if Payton can keep the offense on schedule and keep Stidham upright, it’s hard to justify a downgrade this severe.

On the other side of the ball, the Bills were able to exploit some weaknesses in the heart of the Broncos’ run defense last week. James Cook ran for 117 yards on 24 carries and became the second player this season to run for 100 yards on the Broncos defense. The problem for New England is that they are considerably less set up to exploit that weakness on paper. The Patriots rank 24th in rushing success rate and also struggle with consistency on interior runs. Most of the Patriots’ best run plays have been explosives on the perimeter. 

My other concern for New England is pass protection. In a game that projects to be low scoring, avoiding negative plays will be paramount. Maye has made some big-time throws in his first two playoff starts, but he’s also been under constant duress and has not handled that pressure well. This postseason his pressure-to-sack rate is 52.6 percent. That’s more than 20 percentage points higher than any other playoff quarterback. The Texans’ pass rush completely took over the game and Denver’s is just as capable of wreaking havoc and stopping the Patriots offense.

New England has the league’s most efficient downfield passing offense—but now they’ll face a defense that is elite at getting pressure and top four in EPA per dropback allowed against passes 15-plus yards downfield. 

The Broncos and Payton will need to get creative if they want to win this game. They can try to rely on the running game, and even get Marvin Mims Jr. active on handoffs. Not only did I bet his over 2.5 rush yards at +120 (we only need one decent carry), but I’m grabbing the points with Denver +4.5. 

NFC Championship Game

Los Angeles Rams at Seattle Seahawks (–2.5)

Whoever wins this game will be a healthy favorite in Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara. The Seahawks and Rams have been the two best teams in the NFL for the second half of the season. 

In Week 11, the Rams were a three-point home favorite against the Seahawks. Bettors felt that Los Angeles was a marginally better team, and the Rams won by two. By Week 16 in Seattle, the gap was gone, and the Seahawks were slight 1.5-point home favorites. They won by one in arguably the best game of the entire regular season.

Mike Macdonald’s Seattle defense has continued to smother its opponents—including in two consecutive dominant performances against Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers. If you include the playoffs in the data set, the 2025-26 Seahawks now have the most efficient defense in the league (by EPA per drive) since the start of the 2021 season. They surpassed the 2023 Ravens, whom Macdonald had also coordinated. 

The superlatives don’t end there. Seattle has one of the five best rush defenses of the past decade, and because it can get pressure with four rushers, Macdonald doesn’t have to blitz consistently and risk Matthew Stafford carving them open. Because Seattle doesn’t bring a lot of pressure, it usually plays two-high safeties on defense. It’s a main reason why running backs and tight ends have had so many receptions against them, and why I think this is an excellent matchup for the Rams to use their 13 personnel (one back and three tight ends) to generate mismatches in the middle of the field. Rams tight end Colby Parkinson’s receiving yards total is 22.5, and he’s the player I’m betting to go over. 

The Seahawks’ biggest advantage on offense all season has been in play-action. They have the third-most efficient play-action offense in the NFL and torched the Rams in both of their meetings with those plays. In the first matchup, Sam Darnold made too many mistakes for the team to overcome. The Rams will have corner Emmanuel Forbes in this game after he left the divisional round with an injury, but they’re vulnerable (22nd in EPA allowed) to play-action. 

Even though the Seahawks had a dominant rushing offense the past two games, I suspect that had more to do with their opponents than anything else. The Seahawks still do not have an efficient run offense and will now be without running back Zach Charbonnet as they face the very efficient Rams run defense. Ultimately, I don’t expect either offense to have much success running the ball. We could see some pass-heavy game scripts, which would suggest a higher-scoring matchup than the market is indicating.

These two teams have been roughly equal all year long, and I don’t see much of a difference now. I’d grab the 2.5 points with the Rams if I had to pick a side,and will be betting Parkinson over 22.5 yards, too. 

Picks against the spread:

Broncos +4.5
Rams +2.5

Props:

Marvin Mims over 2.5 rush yards (+120)
Colby Parkinson over 22.5 receiving yards (–110)