An entire season has come down to this for the AFC. No one expected the Cincinnati Bengals (-1)
to be returning to the AFC Championship Game after they started the year 0-2, which may as well have been a kiss of death after losing a Super Bowl the previous season. also weren’t the heavy AFC favorite they’d been in prior years. They had an offseason where they lost wide receiver Tyreek Hill, while the rest of the AFC West supposedly improved, and the Buffalo Bills became the Super Bowl favorite after their big offseason.