Playoff Scenarios: Teams most likely to face the Chiefs in the Divisional round

The NFL’s 2024 regular season still has the rest of Week 17 — and then Week 18 — left to go. So we don’t know exactly how the AFC’s playoff seeding will work out.

But thanks to the Chiefs’ 29-10 victory over the Steelers on Christmas Day, we do know that Kansas City will hold the No. 1 seed.

So if the season ended today, here’s what the AFC seeding would be:

1. Kansas City Chiefs
2. Buffalo Bills
3. Baltimore Ravens
4. Houston Texans
5. Pittsburgh Steelers
6. Los Angeles Chargers
7. Denver Broncos

So remember… everything that follows would be true if the season ended right now.

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 Chargers will be on the road against the Ravens and the Texans will be at home against the Steelers.

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 82% chance to defeat the Broncos, the Ravens have a 83% probability of beating the Chargers and the Texans would win 51% of the time against the Steelers.

After we do the math, here’s what we get:

So if the season ended today, the Texans would be the most likely team to face the Chiefs in Kansas City — but only slightly more likely than the Steelers. It’s pretty much a toss-up.

Over the last two weeks of the season, these seedings could change — along with the Elo ratings for each team. In turn, this could substantially alter the probabilities in all three AFC Wild Card games — and ultimately, which team would be the most likely to come to Kansas City.

Still… this is the way it looks right now.

What do you think?