The NFL’s 2024 regular season has come to an end — at least for the AFC.
The Chiefs will have a bye in the first round of the AFC postseason. But which team will be coming to Kansas City for the Divisional round game in two weeks?
Here are the final AFC seeds
Kansas City Chiefs
Buffalo Bills
Baltimore Ravens
Houston Texans
Los Angeles Chargers
Pittsburgh Steelers
Denver Broncos
What happens next?
As the top seed, the Chiefs get a bye in the Wild Card weekend. Among the remaining teams, division winners play at home. The highest seed plays the lowest seed, the second-highest plays the second-lowest… and so on. This means that in the Wild Card round, the Bills will host the Broncos, the Steelers will be on the road against the Ravens and the Texans will be at home against the Chargers.
The same rules apply in the AFC’s Divisional round games in Week 20. The Chiefs will play at home against the lowest remaining seed. Since only three teams will survive the Wild Card round, we know that the second and third seeds — the Bills and Ravens — cannot play the Chiefs until the conference championship round in Week 21.
So all we have to do is figure out the probability that each of the remaining four teams will get through the Wild Card round and also be seeded the lowest. This is easiest for the seventh-seed team, which only needs to win its first-round game to be the lowest-surviving seed.
It gets more complicated after that, but it’s still straightforward. The sixth seed will play the first seed if it wins and the seventh seed loses. The probability this will happen is equal to the chance the sixth seed wins multiplied by the chance the seventh seed loses. Then we continue that series of calculations for the rest of the teams.
The probabilities for each team
We will use Neil Paine’s Elo model to calculate the probability that each team will win each Wild Card game.
According to the Elo model, the Bills have a 84% chance to defeat the Broncos, the Ravens have a 79% probability of beating the Steelers and the Texans would win 52% of the time against the Chargers.
After we do the math, here’s what we get:
Opponent Chance
Texans 35%
Chargers 32%
Steelers 18%
Broncos 16%
The Texans are the most likely to face the Chiefs in Kansas City — but only slightly more likely than the Chargers. It’s pretty much a toss-up.
Update 8:30 a.m. Monday
Now that Neil Paine has updated his Elo scores following all of Week 18’s games — in which the Broncos jumped from 13th to eighth after their 38-0 defeat of the Chiefs — the probabilities for the Wild Card games have changed.
According to the latest Elo model, the Bills have a 73% chance to defeat the Broncos (down from 84%), the Ravens have a 81% probability of beating the Steelers (up from 79%) and the Texans would win 52% of the time against the Chargers (no change).
In turn, that changes the probabilities for the Chiefs’ Divisional round opponent. According to Elo, the Broncos are significantly more likely to come to Kansas City.
Opponent Chance
Texans 30%
Chargers 29%
Steelers 14%
Broncos 27%
What do you think?
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Which team will the Chiefs host in the Divisional round of the playoffs?
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