The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Los Angeles Chargers 13-12 on Sunday in a game that had no impact on the playoff positioning of either team. The Chargers already were out of contention, and the Chiefs were locked into the AFC’s No. 3 seed and rested many of their front-line players.
As such, KC will open the playoffs at home at 7:15 p.m. Saturday against the Miami Dolphins, who lost Sunday to Buffalo 21-14 to fall to the No. 6 seed. The long-range weather forecast calls for the temperature to be in single digits at kickoff, with winds at 10-15 mph.
The game will be exclusive streamed on Peacock, with no “regular TV†coverage outside the markets of the participating teams. Peacock charges $5.99 per month for its service and it will be the NFL’s first foray into solely streaming a playoff game in most of the nation. That's an avenue it has taken by selling most of its Thursday night contests the last two seasons to Amazon.
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The rest of the postseason contests, through the Super Bowl, will be available on over-the-air television. The playoff field was finalized on Sunday, as the regular season concluded. Two slots remained open in the AFC and NFC as play kicked off, while some teams merely were jockeying for seeding positioning.
In the AFC, Jacksonville — which was 8-3 after 11 games — lost 28-20 to South basement-dwelling Tennessee to finish at 9-8 and miss the playoffs. Had the Jaguars prevailed, they would have won the South title and dropped Houston to a wild-card slot. Instead, the Texans are the division champion.
The Jaguars’ loss also allowed two teams to get into the postseason field — Pittsburgh, which beat Baltimore on Saturday, and Buffalo.
Baltimore clinched the conference’s No. 1 seed last weekend, and thus gets a first-round bye. The Ravens will entertain the AFC’s lowest-remaining seed in the second round.
In the NFC, Tampa Bay beat Carolina 9-0 to take one of that conference's two open postseason slots. Green Bay got the other by stopping Chicago 17-9.
San Francisco already had clinched to top seed in the NFC and gets a bye next week and will host the NFC’s lowest-remaining seed the following weekend.
Meanwhile, the NFC North champion Lions were hit with a potential major setback. Sam LaPorta, who had 86 catches in the regular season — the NFL record for a rookie tight end — suffered a knee ailment Sunday and his availability for next weekend is unknown. LaPorta, a second-round draft pick from Iowa who went to Highland High School, finished the season with 889 yards receiving and 10 touchdowns.
“It’s not as bad as it looked, but it’s not good news,“ Detroit coach Dan Campbell said after the game. “We’ll know more (Monday). I know it looked awful.â€
The New England Patriots long have been out of the playoff race and lost Sunday to the Jets to finish at 4-13, the worst record in Bill Belichick’s standout 29-year NFL coaching career. Rumblings have been heard for weeks that he could be on his way out with the Pats, but he didn't have much to say about it after the game.
“A disappointing year for all of us — players, coaches, staffers, the entire organization," said Belichick, whose 333 victories (including playoffs) are second to Don Shula's 347. “As far as the future goes, I’ll sit down with (Patriots owner) Robert (Kraft) as I do every year. ... That’s all I have to say about that right now, because that’s all there is to talk about."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.