2025 NFL Wildcard Predictions: Denver Broncos vs Buffalo Bills
The postseason has finally arrived and so have our 2025 NFL Wildcard Predictions. We will be predicting the outcome of every NFL play-off game and in today's edition we will break down the Broncos vs Bills. Let's dive in....
Denver Broncos @ Buffalo Bills
Sunday’s slate of games kicks-off with another huge spread in favor of the home team. The visiting Denver Broncos are installed as 8.5 point road dogs with the second-highest total on the board for Sunday at 47.5 points. The biggest takeaway for me here, is the trend of QB’s making their first play-off start vs experienced play-off QB’s. Those first time QB’s hit below 35% ATS when facing a QB that’s made a play-off start and the situation only gets worse on the road. Bo Nix faces the double whammy of it being his first start in the postseason on top of traveling cross-country for this game.
Overall, I don’t really trust this Broncos team and I’ve been looking for a spot to sell them for multiple weeks now. They have struggled mightily when stepping up in competition this season getting blown out by the Ravens, and losing to the Chargers twice and the Bengals once. They rely heavily on their defense, and if they get down in this game I don’t have much faith in them being able to overcome a deficit. Buffalo is arguably the most complete team in football, and they come in ranked first-overall in my NFL Power Rankings dataspace. I will be taking them to win, with my most confidence of any wildcard weekend game.
Score Prediction: Bills 31, Broncos 17
Touchdown Prediction: Ty Johnson
I’ve had this weird feeling that we could see a big Ty Johnson game all week and I haven’t been able to shake it. He’s found the end zone just one time this season, and is priced accordingly with long odds across the board to score. Denver made the play-offs in huge part to their defense this season. They have one of the best defenses in the AFC top to bottom, with great coverage on the back-end and a strong pass rush. The one area to exploit has been throwing to running backs out of the backfield. Denver ranks bottom-three in pass DVOA to the RB position and that’s where I think Johnson can play a huge part. He lit the Lions up a few weeks ago for 100, yes 100 receiving yards and I think we could see Buffalo look to mismatch him on the LBs again this weekend. He does get involved in the red zone as well with 6 targets inside the 20 this season – just two behind Keon Coleman and Khalil Shakir.
Written by Ben Hossler