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The Buffalo Bills’ win over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday night completed the AFC side of the NFL playoff bracket.

The field and the weekend slate are set as the Bills take on the reigning Super Bowl champs the Kansas City Chiefs at 5:30 p.m. CT on Sunday, 24 hours after the Houston Texans battle the Baltimore Ravens at 3:30 p.m. CT on Saturday.

Here, we break down what the sportsbooks are saying about the battle for the AFC title and a place at the Super Bowl.

AFC winner odds: Baltimore Ravens (best odds: +120)

As the AFC’s No. 1 seed and the only team coming into this side of the Divisional Round bracket on the back of a rest, it’s no surprise to see the Ravens remain the favorite to win the AFC at +115 or better. After all, they finished with the best straight-up record (13-4) and the best regular-season point differential (+203) in the league.

Baltimore has been utterly dominant this season, particularly on defense, where the Ravens rank as the second-best unit in the league in the red zone and tied for a league-best 4.6 yards per play allowed. And the anticipated return of tight end Mark Andrews after weeks out with an ankle injury only strengthens both their offense and their championship credentials.

You can understand why there might be a question mark will be over their credentials when under postseason pressure. Baltimore is 1-4 in the postseason with Jackson as the starter and hasn’t made it past the divisional round since winning Super Bowl XLVII over a decade ago.

But this year, the Ravens won six of their nine games against fellow playoff teams, and they’ve already swatted the Texans this season back in Week 1. There’s often a surprise in the NFL postseason, as we saw in the Wild Card round. But little would be more surprising this weekend than the Ravens slipping up on Saturday. In fact, it would be nothing short of stunning.

If the Ravens can get the job done as 8.5-point favorites, they’ll host the winner of what is likely to be a tiring and bruising Chiefs-Bills duel on Sunday. Whoever their opponent is (and they have to get their first themselves, of course) home advantage, rest, Jackson’s form, and Baltimore’s all-around strength have cemented their position as the AFC favorite to punch that Super Bowl ticket.

AFC winner odds: Buffalo Bills (best odds: +235)

Few teams in the NFL are hot like the Bills are now.

Six straight wins, brushing aside fellow playoff teams, Josh Allen flexing his outsider MVP credentials. The Bills are catching fire, the snow in Buffalo be damned. Allen’s stunning four-touchdown display on Monday night in a resounding win over the Steelers in the Wild Card round only increased the appeal of the Bills as an outside-the-favorite bet to win the conference and book a Super Bowl spot.

The dual-threat QB now has a league-leading 48 TDs. Every Buffalo win that passes puts another exclamation mark on their season, particularly their surging form in the last couple of months.

It would be interesting to see where the Bills’ AFC odds might stand were they not still beset by injury issues. Linebackers Terrell Bernard and Baylon Spector and corner Taron Johnson all exited the win over the Steelers with complaints, while linebacker Tyrel Dodson, safety Taylor Rapp, and corners Rasul Douglas and Christian Benford all sat out that game.

As a spectator, it doesn’t get much better than what’s in store on Sunday: the latest installment of Allen vs. Patrick Mahomes in the playoffs, and the enterprising Bills against the reigning champion Chiefs. The Chiefs have been to the conference championship game five years in a row already, while the Bills have lost their last two divisional-round games.

If they win that clash of titans on Sunday, maybe we start to wonder if it’s their year after all?

AFC winner odds: Kansas City Chiefs (best odds: +350)

The Chiefs will have something to say about that, of course.

Fresh from limiting a Miami Dolphins’ offense that led the league in yards to just 264 yards and only seven points in conditions so cold that head coach Andy Reid’s mustache froze, KC and its second-ranked defense are on a mission to silence the naysayers and prove they have the stones to become the first back-to-back Super Bowl winners in 20 years.

Sure, the Chiefs are averaging seven points fewer per game than last year, and sure, Mahomes is heading out on the road for the first time in his playoff career. But you count the Chiefs out at your peril. They have the postseason nous compared to their rivals in the AFC bracket, going 12-3 in the playoffs since Mahomes became the starter in 2018.

The QB gets the headlines, of course, but we’ve never seen a Chiefs defense quite this good. They allow just 16.7 points a game and the way they shut down Tua Tagovailoa, Tyreek Hill, and Co. in the Wild Card round was seriously impressive. With weapons like Rashee Rice, who caught fire for eight catches, 130 yards, and a touchdown on Saturday, supporting Mahomes and Travis Kelce, the champs are a force to be reckoned with even in a season some have labelled as a subpar title defense thus far.

AFC winner odds: Houston Texans (best odds: +1300)

There are long shots, and then there are long shots.

Rarely has a draft pick worked out so well for a team (and so poorly for another; sorry, Carolina). There’s not much left to say about C.J. Stroud that hasn’t already been said, but he underlined his Rookie of the Year qualifications with 274 yards and three touchdowns on 16-of-21 passing in a playoff debut that was meant in some onlookers’ books to be where he would likely come unstuck.

Stroud opened up the Cleveland Browns’ much-vaunted defense to lead Houston to a 45-14 win. Against all the odds (including Saturday’s, in which they were two-point home underdogs), they are now two games from the Super Bowl in a year that was supposed to be a rebuild, no-hope type of campaign.

They’re still a huge underdog to win the AFC, of course. The Texans stick out like a sore thumb amid the Ravens, the Bills, and the Chiefs, and were they to even reach the AFC Championship game, let alone the Super Bowl, it would write the epilogue of one of the more extraordinary NFL stories in recent memory. But, on the strength of Stroud and his supporting cast, we’ve heard worse ideas than putting a chunk of change down at +1300.

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