Who will reach Super Bowl LX? Here are our picks for the NFL Conference Championships

There’s a different kind of viscosity to pain when it simmers instead of striking all at once. Science, in its relentless urge to explain what overwhelms us, says emotional tears - known in academic circles as psychogenic tears - are denser than the ones that fall when we chop an onion or when the wind stings our face. They carry more protein, more weight. They’re engineered for stillness; they slide down the cheek with deliberate slowness, as if trying to give the world enough time to realize we’ve come undone. They are, in essence, a message the body sends when words have run out of breath.

On Saturday night, under the harsh glow of a press‑room spotlight, we saw that density on Josh Allen’s face. He wasn’t the Superman who routinely hurdles 220‑pound defenders. He was a flesh‑and‑blood man, eyes glassy, apologizing for a debt Buffalo seems eternally doomed to leave unpaid. His four turnovers against Denver were self‑inflicted wounds - a brand of pain far too familiar in a city where wings are served hot and tears tend to be swallowed bitter.

Being a Bills fan is an exercise in emotional endurance. I know it because I am one. My relationship with Buffalo began nowhere near Orchard Park, thousands of miles away, watching the last of those four consecutive Super Bowl losses. I was a kid with a limited sense of the world, but enough to understand sadness. That ache stuck to me. Since then, my deepest emotional scars come stamped with a “Made in Buffalo” label. We’re the first team in history to lose three straight playoff games by three points or fewer. Yet another tragic data point in a long collection of Greek dramas written with Scott Norwood’s foot.

Allen’s tears were so heavy they reached Terry Pegula, the team’s owner. It wasn’t a film‑room autopsy that sealed head coach Sean McDermott’s fate. It was the messaging behind that breakdown. When your leader crumbles like that, the system can’t take another patch job. Without looking too long at the past, Pegula fired McDermott - the man who ripped out Buffalo’s losing culture at the roots but still couldn’t, in nine years, deliver a Super Bowl run, even with Superman at his disposal.

But the NFL is a machine with no space for mourning. While Buffalo scrapes up the remains of another tragedy, the schedule shoves us straight into Conference Championship weekend - a perfect mirror of the season’s narrative. For the first time since 2011, all four teams in this round are new. Not a trace of last year’s finalists. Only the survivors of a postseason that has already produced 15 fourth‑quarter lead changes - an unprecedented number that explains why our tear ducts are putting in overtime.

This Sunday, the geography of success rises to the thin air of Denver and the deafening chaos of Seattle. In the AFC, the Patriots visit a Broncos team that looks like it stole Buffalo’s destiny. In the NFC, the Rams head north to battle the Seahawks. It’s a collision of three elite offenses against three of the league’s top four defenses. Perfect balance before the inevitable chaos.

Plenty of people dismiss crying. They call it crude, melodramatic, or a weakness one must “push past” to stay productive. They’re wrong. Tears reflect what matters. And in a sport where glory is decided by inches or a referee’s ruling that borders on illogical, tears are the last honest testimony we have.

AFC Championship Game:

• Patriots (-5.5) at Broncos: Sunday, 3:00 p.m. ET/12 noon PT

Some stadiums hold echoes, and Empower Field at Mile High is a cathedral of ghosts for the New England Patriots. Ten years ago, this very field hosted the last great duel between Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. Today the stage is nearly identical, only the actors have shed their old skins. The Patriots arrive as favorites - a statistical rarity for a visitor in Denver - but betting logic doesn’t feed on nostalgia; it feeds on the cold truth of injury reports. Bo Nix’s ankle didn’t survive the Divisional Round, and with it went much of Denver’s mystique.

Sunday’s storyline revolves around Jarrett Stidham, a man who knows Foxborough’s hallways well. Drafted by the Patriots in 2019 as Brady’s possible heir, Stidham now finds himself facing the game of his life - despite a troubling layer of rust. He hasn’t thrown a meaningful pass since 2023. Fate, with its twisted humor, pits him against Drake Maye, the sensational second‑year quarterback who has pulled New England back into its natural orbit for the sixteenth time in franchise history. Maye is coming off a storm‑taming performance against Houston - three touchdowns in the snow - and on Thursday he was named among the official MVP finalists.

Mike Vrabel, who once lifted the Lombardi Trophy as one of Belichick’s soldiers, now seeks glory from a headset. He could become just the eighth coach to reach the Super Bowl in his first season. But Denver is where winning percentages go to die. The Broncos boast an 8-2 record in conference championships - the highest mark ever - and they hold a 4–1 postseason edge over New England, including those bitter Patriots losses in 2013 and 2015.

The Patriots look to become just the fifth team since 2003 to climb from the division basement to the Super Bowl in a single winter. To do it, they must avoid the turnovers that nearly sank Maye last week and hope Denver’s fourth‑ranked defense doesn’t turn Stidham into an efficient game manager. In the thin Colorado air, where oxygen is scarce and history is heavy, New England will try to prove that its dynasty DNA endures - even with a new king on the throne.

• Prediction: Patriots 21-14 Broncos

NFC Championship Game

• Rams at Seahawks (-2.5): Sunday, 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT

Lumen Field - or whatever corporate name it’s wearing today - will host one of the most electrifying Conference Championships of the past decade. It’s a funhouse‑mirror matchup: the best offense in the NFL versus the best defense. The Rams, powered by Matthew Stafford’s cannon arm and the venom of Davante Adams and Puka Nacua, average 30.5 points per game. Across from them, Mike Macdonald’s Seahawks allow just 17.2. It’s only the third time since the 1970 merger that the league’s No. 1 offense and No. 1 defense meet with a Super Bowl berth on the line.

The personal subplots are irresistible. Sam Darnold, the quarterback with nine lives, has a chance to redeem himself against the team that’s haunted his career. The Rams have punished him with nine playoff sacks and picked him off four times in Week 11 this season. And yet Seattle thrives on chaos. In December, they erased a 16‑point deficit against Los Angeles in a wild overtime win.

But the sharpest psychological blade has a name: Cooper Kupp. The former Super Bowl MVP for the Rams now wears Seahawks blue, trying to join the exclusive fraternity of legends who eliminated the team that made them immortal.

Sean McVay, who turns 40 the day before the game, faces a 38‑year‑old Mike Macdonald in a clash of brilliant minds reshaping the league. The Rams, a Wild‑Card team, aim to become just the fifth modern‑era underdog to reach the big game, buoyed by a streak of four straight Conference Championship wins dating back to 1999. But Seattle - the top seed - just dismantled the 49ers in a 41–6 demolition that sent tremors through the NFC.

Divisional playoff matchups carry an unwritten law. Since 2002, the division winner has taken four out of five such games - and every one of those teams went on to lift the Lombardi. Seattle has home field and the defense. But the Rams have Stafford, a veteran who knows that in the tightest moments, precision outshines noise. In the city of rain, tears of joy may mix with the sweat of a battle destined to become an instant classic.

• Prediction: Rams 27-30 Seahawks

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