Culture
NFL playoffs: Final 4 teams' odds to win Super Bowl, with conference title game analysis
We’re down to the final four. The top-seeded Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers will try to fend off challenges from the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs and the upstart Detroit Lions to reach Super Bowl LVIII.
Jeff Howe breaks down the conference championship matchups before The Athletic’s projection model, created by Austin Mock, reveals each team’s odds of winning the Super Bowl.
AFC
No. 1 Baltimore Ravens vs. No. 3 Kansas City Chiefs, 3 p.m. ET, Sunday
Quarterback Lamar Jackson was the best player on the field during the Ravens’ 34-10 victory against the Houston Texans, and they’re virtually unstoppable when that happens. The Ravens are 10-0 this season, including Saturday when Jackson’s passer rating is above 90, and that doesn’t even take into account his rushing prowess.
It’s hardly all Jackson, though. Head coach John Harbaugh, offensive coordinator Todd Monken and defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald were brilliant in their playoff opener. Monken’s adjustments were outstanding against the Texans’ aggressive blitz packages, while Macdonald accomplished the rare feat of shutting down quarterback C.J. Stroud. It would feel like a surprise at this point if Macdonald doesn’t get a head coaching job this cycle, and it’s not inconceivable to think the Ravens could lose both coordinators.
Patrick Mahomes has reached the AFC Championship every season he has been a starter in the NFL 👑 pic.twitter.com/18EeNToCMC
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) January 22, 2024
While it’s seemed like the Ravens’ year, they’ve now got to slay the reigning Super Bowl champions as the Chiefs continue to attempt to fortify their claim as a modern-day dynasty. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes is coming off his first career playoff victory on the road, and he’s going to have to do it again in his sixth consecutive AFC Championship Game appearance.
Not only that, but the Chiefs just played their best game of the season by a considerable margin. The defense locked in with three consecutive scoreless possessions to close the game, but that unit has been solid all season. More impressive, Mahomes and his supporting cast delivered in several key moments, only making one pivotal mistake. If they play this well in Baltimore, the title game should be a thriller.
LIVE Divisional Round Recap with @robertmays and @Nate_Tice https://t.co/kfMFmUyDIT
— The Athletic NFL (@TheAthleticNFL) January 22, 2024
NFC
No. 1 San Francisco 49ers vs. No. 3 Detroit Lions, 6:30 p.m. ET, Sunday
This game may be decided on the ground, and the Lions are going to need to tighten up in that area. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who ranked last in rushing and yards per carry in the regular season, ran 15 times for 89 yards Sunday in Detroit. That was a surprising performance against a Lions defense that ranked second in rushing yards and third in yards per carry.
The 49ers’ ground game needs little introduction with superstar back Christian McCaffrey, who was an MVP frontrunner for much of the season. If the Niners are moving the ball with McCaffrey, they might double up the Bucs’ rushing numbers.
GO DEEPER
Dre Greenlaw wouldn’t go down, and neither did the 49ers thanks to him
On the other side, the Packers ran 28 times for 136 yards (4.9 yards per carry) against a 49ers defense that ranked 14th by allowing 4.1 yards per carry in the regular season. The Lions’ two-pronged attack of David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs ranked fifth in yards and yards per carry.
There will understandably be plenty of focus on quarterbacks Brock Purdy and Jared Goff, but each offense’s identity is built on the ground. Purdy struggled against the Packers before his impressive game-winning drive, while Goff has been efficient in both playoff victories. Both quarterbacks have been tough to defend when the offense stays on schedule, which is why the NFC Championship Game will likely be decided by the better team on the ground.
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AFC
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GO DEEPER
What separates the Bills from the Chiefs (it’s not just Patrick Mahomes): Sando’s Pick Six
(Photo of Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes: Cooper Neill / Getty Images)
new video loaded: ‘Flesh’ by David Szalay Wins 2025 Booker Prize
transcript
transcript
‘Flesh’ by David Szalay Wins 2025 Booker Prize
David Szalay became the first British Hungarian to win the prestigious Booker Prize for his novel “Flesh.”
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“I think fiction can take risks. I think it’s one of the things that it can do. It can take aesthetic risks, formal risks, perhaps even moral risks, which many other forms, narrative forms, can’t quite do to the same extent.” “I think all six of the books in the short list really, you know, not — it’s not saying this is the headline theme, but there is that theme of reaching out, wanting a connection.”
By Shawn Paik
November 11, 2025
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights the starting points or destinations of five novels about road trips. (Even if you aren’t familiar with the book, most questions offer an additional hint about the location.) To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
In the midst of the world’s unrelenting horribleness, it’s important to make room for beauty. True! But also something of a truism, an idea that comes to hand a little too easily to be trusted. The proclamation that art matters — that, in difficult times, it helps — can sound like a shopworn self-care mantra.
So instead of musing on generalities, maybe we should focus our attention on a particular aesthetic experience. Instead of declaring the importance of art, we could look at a painting. Or we could read a poem.
A poem, as it happens, about looking at a painting.
Hayden did not take the act of seeing for granted. His eyesight was so poor that he described himself as “purblind”; as a child he was teased for his thick-framed glasses. Monet’s Giverny paintings, whose blurriness is sometimes ascribed to the painter’s cataracts, may have revealed to the poet not so much a new way of looking as one that he already knew.
Read in isolation, this short poem might seem to celebrate — and to exemplify — an art divorced from politics. Monet’s depiction of his garden, like the garden itself, offers a refuge from the world.
But “Selma” and “Saigon” don’t just represent headlines to be pushed aside on the way to the museum. They point toward the turmoil that preoccupied the poetry of Hayden and many of his contemporaries.
“Monet’s ‘Waterlilies’” was published in a 1970 collection called “Words in the Mourning Time.” The title poem is an anguished response to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and to the deepening quagmire in Vietnam. Another poem in the volume is a long elegy for Malcolm X. Throughout his career (he died in 1980, at 66), Hayden returned frequently to the struggles and tragedies of Black Americans, including his own family.
Born in Detroit in 1913, Hayden, the first Black American to hold the office now known as poet laureate of the United States, was part of a generation of poets — Gwendolyn Brooks, Dudley Randall, Margaret Danner and others — who came of age between the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black Arts movement of the ’60s.
A poet of modernist sensibilities and moderate temperament, he didn’t adopt the revolutionary rhetoric of the times, and was criticized by some of his more radical peers for the quietness of his voice and the formality of his diction.
But his contemplative style makes room for passion.
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