Welcome to the Conference Championship Round of The Worksheet, a comprehensive fantasy football preview by Rich Hribar.
What is The Worksheet from Rich Hribar?
The Worksheet is a comprehensive weekly fantasy football preview for each NFL game. Rich Hribar analyzes the matchups for every notable fantasy player for every game every week of the NFL season.
Conference Championship Fantasy Football Matchups
For those new to this article, just because the fantasy regular season has ended doesn’t mean fantasy football stops.
The fantasy playoffs offer many new opportunities for playoff leagues, props betting, and daily fantasy games.
With the Broncos, Seahawks, Patriots, and Rams all moving on, we are down to the final four teams, and just two Sundays left in the NFL season.
One thing we learned again last week is that in a single-game elimination, you need to protect the football.
There were 20 turnovers last week.
That matched the most in the Divisional Round since 2001.
All four winners last week won the turnover battle by 2 or more.
Playoff teams in the Super Bowl era to win the turnover battle now have an 81.1% winning percentage.
In the Conference Championship Round since 2002, the team that has won the turnover battle is 30-8.
Teams without a turnover and at least 1 takeaway are 15-2.
Home teams have dominated the closing round of the conference playoffs.
Since the NFL expanded to 32 teams in 2002, home teams are 32-14 straight up this round.
Over the past 10 years, those home teams have a robust 15-5 record.
Both road teams have won outright in the same season twice since 2010 (2012 and 2018).
Against the spread over that period, home teams have posted a 26-20 record.
Those opening data points also tie into favorites here, since 40 of the 46 home teams were favored.
Favorites have an equally strong 32-14 record straight up over that span but a tighter 24-22 record against the spread.
This season, we have a rare home underdog in this round due to Bo Nix‘s injury.
Denver will be just the seventh home underdog in the Conference Championship since the expansion to 32 teams.
The previous six were 3-3 (4-2 ATS), with the last winner being the 2017 Eagles, a team now getting compared to Denver due to the quarterback injury.
Denver was also one of those teams in 2015, when they beat New England 20-18 as 3-point underdogs.
As we touched on last week, however, while road teams and underdogs have not had much success pulling off upset wins, they have kept up based on the implied totals.
There have been only eight times over the 23-year expansion during which both favorites covered.
If you are a fan of seeing points scored, the Conference Championship games have also skewed towards going over the expected total since 2002, posting a 27-17-2 record towards the over during that span.
No. 1 seeds have fared well.
In our sample, the top seeds have a 24-8 outright record in the Championship round and a 19-13 record against the spread.
When the No. 1 seed faces the No. 2 seed, as we have in the AFC, the No. 1 seed has prevailed 14 of 19 times.
It is rare for a No. 5 seed or lower to be playing this late into the postseason, as the Rams are this year.
These lower seeds have had a tough run getting this deep in the NFL postseason and an even tougher ride when they have made it this far.
No. 5 or No. 6 seeds (no 7 seed has yet to make it this far since the NFL added them) are 4-9 in the Championship Round since expansion.
Believe it or not, two of those teams were actually favored, with one winning (the 2010 Packers) and one losing (the 2008 Eagles).
The underdogs went 3-8 (4-7 ATS), but all three winners went on to win the Super Bowl.
This article will be updated throughout the week to reflect major news or injury implications.
I encourage you to use the game-by-game tables and data points here in conjunction with the player rankings that will be available every Wednesday.
Enjoy the games!
Click the matchups below for the individual game previews.
