The near annual playoff matchups between Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen are hardly unprecedented.
The one-sided nature of the postseason rivalry between the two star quarterbacks is more unusual.
Mahomes' Kansas City Chiefs will host Allen and the Buffalo Bills in the AFC title game on Sunday night for the fourth postseason matchup between the QBs in the past five seasons.
Mahomes has come on top in the first three, winning the 2020 AFC title game and 2021 divisional round matchup at home and then a divisional roundup last season in Buffalo.
Mahomes and Allen are the fifth set of quarterbacks to start against each other at least four times in the postseason with most of the others being fairly even.
The Patriots' Tom Brady won his first two playoff matchups against Peyton Manning before losing the final three in the only QB rivalry with five postseason meetings.
Brady split four matchups with Baltimore's Joe Flacco with the Patriots and Ravens alternating wins in those matchups that came in a span of six seasons.
Oakland's Ken Stabler won his first and fourth playoff starts in four seasons against Pittsburgh's Terry Bradshaw but lost the two in the middle. Stabler also came off the bench in the 1972 divisional round matchup and scored on a go-ahead TD run with 1:17 to play before Bradshaw and the Steelers won with the “ Immaculate Reception ” pass to Franco Harris for a game-winning 60-yard TD pass.
The only other matchup that started so one-sided came in the 1990s when Green Bay's Brett Favre won his first three playoff games against Steve Young and the 49ers before San Francisco responded with “The Catch II” and a game-winning 25-yard TD pass from Young to Terrell Owens in a 1998 wild-card game.
Favre added one more playoff win over San Francisco with Jeff Garcia at QB and is one of two QBs to beat the same opponent four times in the postseason with Brady holding a 4-1 record against the Colts.
Mahomes can join them with his fourth playoff win against Buffalo on Sunday. A loss would tie Allen with Aaron Rodgers (0-4 against San Francisco) for the most defeats against one opponent in the playoffs.
Sensational Saquon
The Los Angeles Rams seem to bring out the best in Saquon Barkley.
Barkley followed up his 255-yard rushing performance in the regular season against the Rams with a franchise playoff record 205 in Philadelphia's 28-22 win on Sunday, putting Barkley in some rare territory.
Barkley had the fifth most rushing yards ever in a playoff game and broke the Eagles mark of 195 set by Steve Van Buren against the Rams in the 1949 NFL title game.
He did it thanks to big plays with a 62-yard TD run in the first quarter and a 78-yarder in the fourth, giving him an NFL record six touchdown runs of at least 60 yards this season, including four in the two games against the Rams.
Barkley finished with 460 yards against Los Angeles this season. There have been only four other times one player ran for more than 430 yards against an opponent in a single season, playoffs included.
Adrian Peterson has the most with 508 yards in three games against Green Bay in 2012, followed by Jamal Lewis with 500 against Cleveland in 2003, O.J. Simpson with 469 versus New England in 1973 and Derrick Henry with 462 against Houston in 2020.
Barkley needs 135 yards on Sunday against Washington to join that group for a second time after rushing for 296 yards in the first two meetings against the Commanders.
Quality Quinn
Coach Dan Quinn has helped engineer an impressive turnaround in Washington.
Quinn took over a team that finished tied for the second worst record in the NFL last season at 4-13 and helped the Commanders make it all the way to the NFC title game.
With a win Sunday at Philadelphia, Quinn will become the ninth coach to make the Super Bowl in his first full season on the job and the first to do it after taking over a team with a losing record.
Four of those first-year coaches won the Super Bowl with Gary Kubiak doing it in Denver in the 2015 season, Jon Gruden in Tampa Bay in 2002, George Seifert for San Francisco in 1989 and Don McCafferty for the Baltimore Colts in 1970.
This is the second time Quinn has taken a team to this stage of the playoffs, losing a Super Bowl as head coach for Atlanta in the 2016 season. He is the 13th coach since the merger to go to the conference title game with at least two teams and could become the eighth coach to take two franchises to a Super Bowl.
Dallas' drought
With Quinn leading Washington to its first conference title game appearance in 33 years, that means that 15 of the 16 teams in the NFC have made it to this stage in the last 15 seasons.
The lone exception? The five-time Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys.
Dallas last played in the NFC championship game in the 1995 season on the way to winning a third Super Bowl in four seasons. The once-proud franchise known as America's Team has fallen short of that stage for 29 straight seasons despite being tied for the 10th most playoff trips in that span with 13.
There are three AFC teams that haven't made the conference title game since 1995 with Miami making its last trip in the 1992 season, Cleveland in 1989 and Houston never making it since becoming an expansion team in 2002.
The Texans fell to 0-6 in the divisional round with the loss on Saturday at Kansas City.
Division flop
The NFC North dominated the regular season with three teams winning at least 11 games and the .750 winning percentage in non-division games tying for the second best mark of any division since the 1970 merger.
That success didn't carry over to the playoffs with Minnesota and Green Bay losing in the wild-card round and the NFC's top seed, Detroit, losing its playoff opener to Washington in the divisional round. Those three teams had gone 29-4 in the regular season against non-division opponents.
There had been 34 times since the merger when three teams from a division made the playoffs — excluding the 1982 strike-shortened season when there were no divisions — and this marked the only time none of the teams won a playoff game.
The Lions joined the 2011 Packers as the only teams who won 15 games in the regular season and then failed to win a playoff game.
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Josh Dubow, The Associated Press
