The Worksheet: Conference Championship Fantasy Football, All You Need To Know

Welcome to the Conference Championship Round edition of The Worksheet, a fantasy football overview, by Rich Hribar.

For those that are new to this article, just because the fantasy regular season has ended doesn’t mean that fantasy football stops. The fantasy playoffs offer a host of new opportunities for playoff leagues, props betting, and daily fantasy games.

With the Chiefs, Bengals, 49ers, and Rams all moving on, we are down to the final four.

Some Conference Championship Round recent history. Home teams have dominated the closing round of the conference playoffs. Since the NFL expanded to 32 teams in 2002, home teams are 26-12 straight up this round. Twice (2012 and 2018) over that 19-year span both road teams did win outright, so that does not mean we can rule out any upsets despite the success of home teams over this run. Against the spread, home teams have posted a 22-16 record. They are also 8-4 against the spread over the past six years.

That, of course, ties into favorites here since 32 of those home teams were also favored. Favorites have an equally strong 26-12 record straight up over that span, but a tighter 20-18 record against the spread, including a 6-6 record against the spread over the same recency highlighted above.

Conference Championship games have also skewed towards going over the expected total since 2002, posting a 24-12-2 record towards the over during that span. All four games the past two years have gone over the game total this round and have an 8-2 record towards the over in total over the previous five years.

This is the first time since 2010 that neither No. 1 seed has made the Championship Round.

No. 2 seeds getting a pass of not having to face the No. 1 seed have not fared as well as you would assume, either. Those teams are 4-5 since 2002.

If you are a team like the 49ers, who did not win their division and have had to win three straight games on the road to make the Super Bowl, things get even tougher in the Conference Championship Round. Since 2002, those teams are 4-7 straight up and against the spread with a 2-6 record since 2007, but one of those teams was the Buccaneers a year ago, who went on to win the Super Bowl.

This article will be updated throughout the week to reflect major news or injury implications. I encourage that you use the game-by-game tables and data points here in conjunction with the player rankings that will be available every week this season on Thursdays and enjoy the games.

Click the matchups below for the individual game previews.

All lines are taken from VegasInsider