Bills’ Super Bowl path begins at the surging Jaguars, who have won eight in a row
Buffalo (12-5) at Jacksonville (13-4)
Sunday, 1 p.m. EST, CBS.
BetMGM NFL odds: Bills by 1.
Against the spread: Bills 8-9, Jaguars 12-5.
Series record: Tied 10-10, with Jacksonville winning both postseason matchups.
Last meeting: Bills beat the Jaguars 47-10 in Buffalo on Sept. 23, 2024.
Last week: Jaguars beat the Titans 41-7; Bills beat the Jets 35-8.
Bills offense: overall (4), rush (1), pass (15), scoring (T4).
Bills defense: overall (7), rush (28), pass (1), scoring (12).
Jaguars offense: overall (11), rush (20), pass (12), scoring (6).
Jaguars defense: overall (11), rush (1), pass (21), scoring (8).
Turnover differential: Bills plus-1; Jaguars plus-13.
Bills player to watch
QB Josh Allen enters the playoffs for the seventh consecutive season and with a 7-6 record, with four of those losses on the road. He’s completed 65.7% of his passes, averaging 258 yards a game, with 33 touchdowns (25 passing, seven rushing, one receiving). He also has just four interceptions and two lost fumbles.
Jaguars player to watch
RB Travis Etienne could be playing his final game in Jacksonville. The fifth-year pro is a pending free agent, and although he has a career-high 13 total touchdowns, he hasn’t topped 100 yards rushing since late September. Going against a defense that has allowed more than 150 yards on the ground seven times gives him a chance to shine.
Key matchup
The NFL’s top rushing attack against the league’s best run defense. Buffalo’s James Cook led the league with 1,621 yards rushing, averaging 95.3 a game, and faces a unit that didn’t allow any player to reach 75 yards on the ground. The Jaguars topped the league in run defense for the first time in franchise history, allowing 85.6 yards a game. They became the third team since 2000 to not allow a 75-yard rusher in any game.
Key injuries
Bills: Jordan Phillips won’t play after joining fellow DT Ed Oliver (torn bicep/knee) on injured reserve. Rookie CB Maxwell Hairston (ankle) is not expected to play. K Matt Prater is questionable after aggravating a quadriceps injury to his kicking leg. Starting LB Terrel Bernard’s status bears monitoring because of a calf injury that led to him sitting out last weekend.
Jaguars: RG Patrick Mekari (back) and LT Cole Van Lanen (knee) are expected back. Mekari missed the past two weeks, and Van Lanen injured his right knee in the fourth quarter against Tennessee and sat out practice Wednesday.
Series notes
The series is tied at 10, although Jacksonville has won three of the past four, including a wild-card game in the 2017 season that featured Jaguars QB Blake Bortles finishing with more rushing yards (88) than passing yards (87).
Stats and stuff
The Bills are 7-7 in playoff games in nine seasons under coach Sean McDermott, with five of those losses coming on the road. … The Bills have dropped eight consecutive road games in the playoffs, all of them since a win at Miami in the 1992 AFC championship game. The road skid is the NFL’s second-longest, active postseason run behind Detroit’s 12 in a row. … Buffalo went 6-5 when trailing at halftime and twice overcame double-digit, fourth-quarter deficits. … Allen was sacked a career-high 40 times and went 3-5 in games he committed a turnover. Playoffs included, he’s 48-35 in games in which he commits a turnover, and 46-10 in turnover-free outings. … Cook is Buffalo’s first player to win the NFL rushing title since O.J. Simpson did so four times, the last one coming in 1976. … Khalil Shakir led Buffalo with 719 yards receiving, but the Bills had 11 players with at least one TD catch, led by TE Dalton Kincaid’s five. … LT Dion Dawkins, S Jordan Poyer, CB Tre’Davious White, LB Matt Milano and LS Reid Ferguson all holdovers from the Buffalo team that lost at Jacksonville in the 2017 wild-card game. … The Jaguars are averaging 33.6 points during their eight-game winning streak, the franchise’s longest since 1999. … They are 4-1 in home playoff games. … Jacksonville is the third team in NFL history to win 13 or more games a season after losing 13 or more, joining a list that includes 2025 New England and 1999 Indianapolis. … Jacksonville’s Liam Coen is the seventh head coach in NFL history to win 13 or more games in his first season. … QB Trevor Lawrence joined Allen, Arizona’s Kyler Murray and Carolina’s Cam Newton as the only players in NFL history with 25 or more TD passes and nine of more TD runs the same season. Lawrence has 24 total TDs (19 passing and five rushing) during the team’s win streak. … LB Devin Lloyd finished second in the NFL with six takeaways, including five interceptions. … CB Antonio Johnson had a career-high nine pass defenses in the regular season. … Lloyd and Johnson were only players in the NFL with five or more INTs and at least one sack.
___
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL