NFL conference championship games guide: Chiefs v Bengals and Rams v 49ers

After a woeful Wildcard Weekend that bordered on the unwatchable at times, last week's divisional round action turned out to be compelling viewing.

The Kansas City Chiefs' win over the Buffalo Bills proved a fitting finale – with one notable exception – on what may have been the most enthralling weekend in the history of the NFL. Three games were decided by walk-off field goals and the Chiefs prevailed in overtime in an all-time classic of wild momentum swings as regulation time drew to a close.

All four encounters could have had different results, but the one unsatisfactory outcome was the manner in which the Chiefs achieved their victory.

We know that securing first possession confers an advantage to the team that wins the overtime coin toss, a fact backed up by a sizeable data set. That advantage was always likely to be magnified in a game where offence reined and defence was negated by the brilliance of Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen.

Over a long enough time span, it's often assumed that luck evens out, only that's not true. And they say in the long run, we're all dead, but for NFL players, a more pressing concern is that in the short to medium term, they're all retired. The average NFL career is just 3.3 years long.

If luck really is where preparation meets opportunity, the Bills' defeat has to be laid mainly at the door of head coach Sean McDermott. Mahomes boasts talents that seem in the realms of the ethereal and divine at times. A squib kick or cynical fouling after that late Bills touchdown significantly reduces the 13 seconds the Chiefs had to respond. At times, NFL seems little more than violent chess, with a huge playbook of strategies, but McDermott was badly shown up as more patzer than grandmaster.

Kansas City