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the refs have zero incentive - none - to intentionally get calls wrong. they are graded after every game internally, and fans and media grade them publicly. being wrong leads to less opportunity to call playoff games and super bowls. do people actually think the nfl is going to tell clete blakeman and his crew to cheat for the chiefs? for what purpose? so they can cultivate more swiftie viewers in the short term while jeopardizing the long term? (ie scandal, lack of trust, gambling ramifications etc.) this would be literal criminal behavior if such a thing took place. it would be game fixing directed by the league to be carried out by the people charged with maintaining fair play. officiating is incredibly hard. there’s a subset of national tv games every year that have so many 50/50 bang-bang subjective/judgment calls that it’s almost comical. like, the refs are wrong no matter what they call. the broadcasters think A, the rules experts think B, and the fans are going to think whatever benefits their team, goes against the team they hate or whatever helps their bets. most people who opine about the rules don’t even know the rulebook themselves (i have watched 1000+ games and i don’t know all the rules myself.) bitching about refs has gone too far. it’s too frequently the story because slow motion replay, freeze frames and instant reaction social media takes - often by the most conspiratorial morons on earth - makes it the story. once you accept that missed calls are inevitable and random, you will enjoy watching sports more.

among active QBs, josh allen draws the most roughing the passer penalties in the NFL on a per-game basis with 38 in 122 games (0.31 per game). allen drew 11 roughing the passer penalties in the 2020 season. i believe that is a modern NFL record (no other QB has drawn more than 8 in a year in data that goes back the last 15 years.) allen had seven roughing calls last year and five more this year. mahomes has had 31 career roughing the passer penalties, or 0.23 per game, which ranks him ninth among active QBs. but mahomes also throws far more than the league average and has attempted more passes than his peers who entered the league at roughly the same time. for example, mahomes has attempted ~800 more passes than allen since entering the league and has played nine more games (includes playoffs). given that, you'd expect mahomes to have more - not less. if you break it down by dropbacks, it looks like this: allen: 0.93 per 100 (3rd most penalties drawn) mahomes: 0.64 per 100 (20th most) among the 31 roughing the passer penalties for mahomes, eight of them have come in playoff games or super bowls. someone with more time than me can go through the eight plays and determine if they are legit or not - or the timing - or how much they mattered. i don't think the chiefs get preferential treatment from refs. the numbers actually suggest the opposite (not just mahomes, but the chiefs in general.) the common counter argument is that "it's not how many penalties, it's when." i read a recent analysis that suggested the chiefs are not major beneficiaries in one-score games in 2nd halves either. the fans of 31 teams who call the refs biased for the chiefs likely have a bias against the chiefs themselves. they're sick of the chiefs. they actively root against the chiefs. and nobody plays in primetime or on national tv more than the chiefs. "calling out the chiefs" has become an easy way for media members to get attention and claiming the refs don't have bias but are equally bad for all teams is the surest way to be hated and called a clown. no other team in the league has fans that all come together to create frame-by-frame replays, zoomed-in images and super slow motion videos quite like the chiefs. because of this, the chiefs flags draw outsized attention/coverage/reaction. people simply don't care if there's a bad call in a panthers or colts game. interestingly, america defended the chiefs in the 2018 afc championship game when two and possibly three rotten calls went against them to help the patriots win the game. but at that point in time, america loved mahomes and the chiefs and were alleging that the patriots got all the calls and that the nfl was cheating for them. next time you watch a bills game and see a bad call - whether it be the atrocious call against dawkins or the questionable pass interference penalty that benefited coleman in the ravens game - just ask yourself: "what if this was the chiefs?" because those calls, while they got some attention, generated very little media coverage broadly. and the PI flag, whether it was right or wrong, was probably the biggest call of the game in terms of win expectancy.

how many is fans of buffalo expecting any idea? i know a few who are interested

Just peeked at box office sale, tickets are unbelievably high. Prices are what you would expect for Vegas, New York or LA, not Kansas City. Are there 75,000+ people in KC area who can afford $750 uppers and lowers as high as 2k? There are club levels with $2500 face.

i generally agree that the chiefs have been more healthy than unhealthy in the playoffs for the mahomes era but they've taken some brutal lumps of their own. their shot at b2b super bowls was pretty much crushed due to injuries all along the offensive line before the bucs game (bucs DL chased mahomes all over the yard.) last year, they lost all pro left guard joe thuney and their best non chris jones pass rusher charles omenihu to season ending injuries in the playoffs. mahomes has had to leave two different playoff games (didnt finish the game vs browns in 2020, forced to the locker room by andy vs jags in 2022) and his injury was believed to be so limiting before the bengals '22 afc title game that the chiefs opened as 3.5 point home underdogs. mahomes was limited during the super bowls vs bucs and eagles. but yes, they've ran pretty well on injuries as a whole, certainly haven't racked up major cluster injuries at a position outside of the aforementioned OL disaster in 2020.

for all intents and purposes it's a sellout. 99.5% of seats have been sold.

is wild card fatigue starting to settle in and people are saving $ for divisonal round and beyond? just checked the bills ticketmaster site, there's still over 300 seats left direct through the box office, there's close to a couple thousand seats on resale for less than $200, and some are selling for less than $100 (including fees). there's a bunch of lowers still selling for less than $150 and 45-yard line lower level for $245. i'd guess these will be even cheaper overnight/tomorrow. the forecast looks pretty good for WNY in mid january. if you're on the fence, this seems like an overly fair price point for a playoff game.

The rest of the NFC is pretty mid.

Andy Reid, Jim Harbaugh, Sean Payton, Bill Belichick in the same division. That would essentially eliminate the AFC West from the #1 seed for the immediate future.

When buying Super Bowl tickets, the sweet spot - generally - is to buy roughly 2-4 days before the actual game. There are a few graphs circulating from prior Super Bowls with data to back this up. Last year's Super Bowl in Vegas, the optimal time to buy was Friday at noon. Tickets largely dropped in price until that time. Then from that point forward, as tickets became more scarce, the prices shot up 20-25% from their lows. The prior year, in Arizona, the optimal date to buy was Saturday. The optimal time to buy for the Super Bowl in LA if memory serves was gameday. The optimal time to buy for the Super Bowl in Miami was Thursday (maybe Friday). NFLonLocation I have found to be the best place to buy tickets. If you call them directly, they'll generally work with you a bit with discounts on fees as well. I've used them for three different Super Bowls and found their prices to be best. They also come with a VIP pre party whereas some tickets from other resellers do not. Size of stadium matters. Barring something unforeseen, I think it will be best to wait this year. The SoFi and Phoenix Super Bowls both had capacities above 70k. Miami and Las Vegas were closer to 60k. And in Miami and Vegas, both stadiums allot a ton of seating to clubs, premium lounges, etc. It's no surprise that Miami and especially Vegas trended toward the more expensive side. New Orleans will seat more than 70k. The one caveat here is that if it's Bills vs Lions, or Bills vs Vikings, the Super Bowl drought and starved-for-success fans could be far more likely to buy up tickets and drive up price. If it were Packers or Rams, and to a lesser extent Eagles, I think it would be on the cheaper end. I have found the best way to gauge timing is to go to a site like OnLocation and track how many tickets are available each day. For the first full week, you'll notice that ticket inventory will be pretty stable. Sometimes ticket inventory actually increases the first week. But then it will get lower and lower. You'll know when it's time to fire when you start to see drastic drops in availability.

all the credit in the world to mcdermott for not only granting this interview, but for speaking 4x the agreed upon length. ty dunne said he was given 15 minutes, but then mcdermott kept going and going. the interview lasted for over an hour. the interview was in mcdermott's office. it was held last week. as in, less than two weeks before the playoffs - and during a time when the bills were reasonably in playoff prep mode since the NE game was a throwaway. i don't think i've ever heard of such a thing in all my decades of following/watching the nfl. what head coach is granting a private interview with a reporter and speaking to them for an hour plus less than two weeks before the playoffs? the full Q&A reads like part self testimonial, part therapy. mcdermott comes off as likeable and definitely someone worth rooting for. he badly wants to win a super bowl in buffalo. but this just reeks of insecurity to me. he has a clear desire to win people over, particularly his critics, likely even ty dunne himself. and that just kinda blows my mind. i just can't see someone like andy reid giving this interview. imagine andy being introspective out loud to his biggest critic in a sit-down interview two weeks before the divisional round. it wouldn't happen. now, to be clear. there's 168 hours in a week. one hour with ty dunne isn't going to hurt anything in the bigger picture. but again, the fact that mcdermott felt this was a necessary use of time is pretty surprising and a bit revealing.

worth noting they were a blocked 29-yard FG away from beating the Chiefs at Arrowhead. this team is very capable.

so is joe brady just an elite play caller or what? trubisky just looked dialed in, flawless, on that TD drive surrounded by backups.

he got saddled with a bottom 5 QB (in play, not talent) who the whole team probably hates, only to have him suffer a season ending injury and get replaced by the likes of jameis winston, DTR and bailey zappe. star RB also got hurt, and by season's end their leading rusher was d'onta foreman. oh, and they traded away their best receiver. surprised this didn't go well.

If they have to move Chiefs-Broncos to Monday, wouldn't put it past the league to shift Broncos vs Playoff opponent to MNF Wild Card round. And yes, that potential opponent could be the Bills.

Bills-Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium is easily the best storyline. Bills-Chiefs played the greatest playoff game of all time (13 seconds) and followed that up with a nail biter in Buffalo last year and has been (on balance) a pretty even matchup on the field for 5+ years. Chiefs-Ravens has been one-sided: KC with 5 wins, and the lone defeat was by a point. Last year's Chiefs-Ravens AFC title game was good but not great and not particularly memorable. Baltimore's city nor fanbase has much curb appeal. With Chiefs-Bills, you either get a shot at nfl history (Chiefs become first 3peat ever) or Bills end their Super Bowl drought. There isn't a storyline involving Baltimore that's particularly intriguing imo other than Lamar is fun to watch.

pretty shocking development for KC. watson was assumed out for the year. he went out a few weeks before the bills game with a broken fibula, and that coincided with the chiefs being somewhat of a trainwreck defensively. they still kept points down for the most part, but they got torched by plenty of bad QBs, including aiden o'connell and bryce young, while the watson replacement(s) struggled in coverage or outright blew assignments. spags had to play more zone, and the chiefs aren't as good in zone. it got bad enough that the chiefs signed steven nelson off the street to eventually see if he can find his way onto the field (graded out as a solid press man corner his final year in houston.) the chiefs D did get better down the stretch after charles omenihu returned. the pass rush got home plenty the last three games. but with watson back, now the chiefs can more closely resemble the chiefs D of last year with mcduffie/sneed playing press man, with their full complement of pass rushers. specific to the bills, they'll be able to match up vs shakir and cooper, which will place outsized importance on guys like coleman, samuel, hollins to win their matchups when called upon when matched with lesser DBs like nazeeh johnson. a chiefs-bills collision course seems almost inevitable. both teams had some guys out the first meeting. for KC, they played without watson, omenihu, pacheco, hollywood brown and butker. they'll also now likely have DJ humphries (late season add) at left tackle. the bills were without spencer brown, coleman and kincaid.

worthy and rice is gonna be one hell of a combo. worthy really coming on strong as usage/targets increase.

worthy looks better and better every week. he's on the rashee rice trajectory. rice started slow, then turned into a beast. worthy more involved today than any prior game.

Eric Eager, formerly of PFF, studied the phenomenon of Andy saving his absolute best plays for the biggest games (ie playoffs and crucial afc games). He often referred to them as simply "the good plays." Eager has deleted almost all of his tweets since landing a job with the Carolina Panthers earlier this year, but it's an actual real thing and KC's offensive #s are disproportionately good vs good teams. Now, maybe Mahomes and the Chiefs in general just get up for big games and perform better in those games. I'm sure not all of it can be attributed to play calling. But it seems like it's at least a piece of the pie.

If the Chiefs were the 2 seed, I agree with you. Them being the 2 seed would have meant that they highly likely played hard in every regular season game, including the Week 18 game at Denver, in desperate pursuit of the 1-seed, only to come up short. Then they'd likely play either the Broncos or Chargers in the Wild Card round (not easy), followed by the Ravens or Steelers, followed by a road trip to Buffalo. Then perhaps Detroit or Philly in the Super Bowl. The Chiefs would have less than a 20% chance of winning all four. But if they're the 1 seed, they've got a very real shot. If the Chiefs win and Bills lose this week, the Chiefs in theory could have the 1-seed wrapped up after Week 16. That would enable them to rest Weeks 17 and 18 if they desired plus get a 1st-round bye. They wouldn't have to use a single good play in their playbook and would have pretty much have a month to reimagine the operation on both sides of the ball and get as healthy as possible. Part of the Chiefs' playoff success last year on offense I'd assume had a lot to do with Andy unloading the clip - he saves his absolute best plays for the playoffs. Being able to strategically deploy them across two games, both at home, with time off in between, and extra time to prep for possible opponent(s) is way easier than having to play every single week nonstop down the stretch in the regular season and then do it three times in the playoffs to advance to the Super Bowl. If the Chiefs actually do get the 1-seed they better enjoy it. The Broncos and Chargers are coming for blood starting next year. I don't see many AFC West sweeps in KC's future anytime soon.

the interior OL are considered best in the NFL and yet they've still given up 35 sacks now thru 12-ish games.

Chiefs left tackle.....still a problem. Maybe 4th time's a charm.

did anyone actually get paid last time?

the chiefs have the best interior offensive line in football. they have kelce who remains a top 3 tight end, and noah gray, who is a starter level caliber te backing him up. with mahomes as qb, they can get by with avg receivers, and i'd argue when hollywood brown returns next month a wr corps of hollywood, hopkins, worthy and juju is actually pretty strong. in the backfield, they have pacheco and kareem hunt. but the chiefs are atrocious at tackle, specifically at left tackle. what the chiefs have shown us beyond doubt is that if you are league worst at left tackle, your offense can look rather inoperable. every bad snap the chiefs play on offense can pretty much be attributed to their tackles getting smoked. the chiefs will get humphries in at left tackle starting next week. if he solidifies mahomes' blind side in a real way, i think the chiefs offense will look better than it has the prior two years come playoff time. they always step up the play calling and take it to another level when it matters most anyway. but the defense looks like a very real concern. which i don't totally get. other than the departure of sneed - and losing his replacement, jaylen watson, to midseason injury - it's the exact same defense as last year. except now they've got uche as an extra pass rusher, and just added omenihu back into the fold. there's really no reason why this D should be looking as bad as it has.