Either a Super Bowl rematch or an unprecedented appearance in football’s game of the year will result from the Jan. 28 NFL conference championship matchups in Baltimore and Santa Clara, California.
The Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs, who will square off for American Football Conference supremacy, are each hoping for a return visit to the Super Bowl. Ditto for the San Francisco 49ers, who will play for the National Football Conference championship on their home field at Levi’s Stadium, 40 miles south of the city.
Then there are the upstart Detroit Lions, one of four NFL franchises that have never played in a Super Bowl. The Lions, who will oppose the 49ers, won four NFL titles between 1935 and 1957, but have reached just one previous NFC Championship Game, during the 1991 season, since the dawn of the Super Bowl era after the 1966 season.
Should Detroit pull an upset against San Francisco, it would leave the Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans, and Jacksonville Jaguars as the only NFL teams never to have reached a Super Bowl.
The 49ers, meanwhile, rank fifth in league history with seven Super Bowl appearances, including four championships during the 1980s and another following the 1994 season. Their five victories are tied with the Dallas Cowboys for third all-time, one behind the Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots, who share the NFL record.
San Francisco, though, has lost the past two times it has reached the Super Bowl, against the very two teams it could face again this year.
The Ravens, coached then and now by John Harbaugh, defeated the 49ers 34–31 to cap the 2012 NFL season in New Orleans. That game marked the only time in NFL history that brothers have been head coaches on opposite sides of a Super Bowl. San Francisco was then under the leadership of Jim Harbaugh, the former University of Michigan coach who on Jan. 24 returned to the NFL as coach of the Los Angeles Chargers.
The 49ers also lost to the Chiefs, 31–20, in the Super Bowl following the 2019 season, in Miami Gardens, Florida.
That game marked the first of three Super Bowl appearances in the past four years for Kansas City. The Chiefs suffered a 31–9 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in Tampa, at the end of the 2020 season, but defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 38–35 last year in Glendale, Arizona.
Until its recent run, Kansas City had not been to the Super Bowl since playing in two of the first four. The Chiefs lost to the Green Bay Packers 35–10 in the inaugural game that matched champions of the NFL and the old American Football League at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum at the end of the 1966 season. Three years later, Kansas City defeated the Minnesota Vikings 23–7 in New Orleans. Baltimore has won in each of its two Super Bowl appearances, including a 34–7 victory over the New York Giants in Tampa to conclude the 2000 season.
Following is a look at each of the conference championship games, as well as predictions. After getting just two of this year’s first six playoff games correct, we called all four of last week’s games accurately.
Kansas City at Baltimore, noon (CBS)
For all the talk that football games are won in the trenches and defense wins championships, both of which are very true by the way, there is no mistaking that the focal point of this game will be the quarterback duel between Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs and Lamar Jackson of the Ravens. It is simply too delicious to resist.Mahomes is a two-time Super Bowl champion, a two-time NFL most valuable player, and has made a solid case as one of the great quarterbacks of all-time. Jackson, the prototype dual threat who is as dangerous with his legs as his arm, is likely to win his second MVP award this season and longs to join the echelon of Super Bowl winners.
For all the attention paid to the fact that Mahomes had never previously played a playoff game on the road, that didn’t stop Kansas City from going into Buffalo and winning 27–24 last week. Baltimore, meanwhile, handily disposed of visiting Cleveland, 34–10.
The Ravens are the No. 1 seed for a reason. They have been the league’s best team all season. But until someone proves otherwise, Mahomes is still the king.
Prediction: Kansas City 27, Baltimore 23
Detroit at San Francisco, 3:30 p.m. (Fox)
In the wake of the Cowboys’ early playoff exit by virtue of a 48–32 loss to the visiting Green Bay Packers on Jan. 14, the Lions have perhaps become a new version of America’s Team.With a 24–23 triumph over the visiting Los Angeles Rams on Jan. 14 and last week’s 31–23 decision over Tampa Bay, the long-downtrodden Detroit franchise has its first playoff victories since winning one game in 1991. Having become the darlings of not only the Motor City but much of unaffiliated NFL fandom, the Lions now must prove they can win on the road.
The 49ers, the NFC’s top-seeded team, staved off a spirited Green Bay upset bid last week, winning a rain-soaked game 24–21, and figure to be significantly better this week.
The quarterbacks will be worth watching here, too. Second-year San Francisco starter Brock Purdy struggled most of the way last week, while Detroit’s Jared Goff returns to his roots. Goff starred at Marin Catholic High School in Kentfield, north of San Francisco, and the University of California.
It is tempting to go with the underdog, especially given the Lions’ one-two rushing punch of David Montgomery and rookie Jahmyr Gibbs, and the 49ers’ struggles to stop the run, but overall experience is heavily in the home team’s favor.
Prediction: San Francisco 34, Detroit 20
