The last real NFL football week is upon us. The Conference Championship Round is the final chance true football fans have to watch games in a comfortable way without talk of commercials, halftime shows, and seven-layer dips permeating the conversation. So, as we pour one out for the 2025 season, let’s dive right into the ClutchPoints 2025 NFL Conference Championship Round picks, predictions, and odds column.
Congrats to everyone involved in the NFL’s final four, except for the New England Patriots fans, who everyone finds annoying at this point, and the referees who gifted the Denver Broncos a spot in the AFC Championship Game.
The outcomes of the Divisional Round matchups have set up an incredible NFC Conference Championship contest between the Los Angeles Rams and Seattle Seahawks, and a game with the biggest home dog in Conference Championship Game history on the AFC side of the bracket. But hey, the Seahawks game last Saturday kicked off on time, so who cares the zebras didn’t review the biggest call of the game?
Bitter Bills fan rantings aside, after watching the 2025 NFL Playoffs to this point, it seems easy to predict that a Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl is the most realistic outcome once the dust has settled this Sunday. Even if that is the outcome, there is still a matter of the final scores, which is why we will make our picks and predictions straight up and against the spread now.
The NFL Conference Championship Round schedule brings us two Sunday games with the Broncos and Patriots kicking at 3:00 pm ET and the Rams and Seahawks starting at 6:30 pm ET.
After going 6-0 against the spread and 5-1 straight up in the Wild Card Round, we came back to earth in the Divisional Round, going 2-2 both straight up and ATS. We completely whiffed on Bills-Broncos, nailed Texans-Patriots, and won with the winner in 49ers-Seahawks and with the spread in Rams-Bears. This brings our overall record in the 2025 campaign to 172-110 when just picking winners and 133-143-6 ATS.
Previous weeks: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13| Week 14| Week 15 | Week 16 | Week 17| Week 18 | Wild Card| Divisional Round
So, with that, let’s get right into the NFL Conference Championship Round picks, predictions, and odds.
Courtesy of DraftKings, here are the NFL odds.
New England Patriots (-4.5) at Denver Broncos
Despite the controversial ending to the Bills-Broncos game on Saturday, the AFC Championship looked like it was setting up to be a great one, featuring two second-year quarterbacks about to make their mark on NFL history.
However, when Sean Payton returned to the podium after his first presser to tell the gathered media that Bo Nix suffered a broken ankle and was done for the season, all that changed. Now we get Jarrett Stidham, who will become the QB with the fewest career starts (four) to start a Conference Championship Game.
What the Broncos now lack in QB play, they may be able to make up for with elite coaching. Sean Payton is a Super Bowl-winning coach who has taken Nix—a fairly average prospect— and made him into the signal-caller of the No. 1 seed and conference finalist. And the Broncos’ QB coach, Davis Webb, is only 30, but one of the hottest names in this head coaching cycle.
If Payton is the genius everyone thinks he is and Webb is the head coaching candidate teams and pundits are touting him as, then there is a real chance they can coach Stidham up enough to keep them in the game on Sunday. After that, if the defense steps up like it has all season, this game will be closer than predicted.
All that said, the other side has Mike Vrabel and Josh McDaniel, who have proven to be one of the best coaching tandems in the NFL this season. And with MVP candidate Drake Maye at the helm, it’s easy to see why the Patriots are significant favorites on the road.
So, while the Broncos staff may be able to coach Stidham up, the Patriots are just too much of a wagon right now and they will cruise to the Big Game.
Pick: Patriots 27-17
Los Angeles Rams at Seattle Seahawks (-2.5)
The conclusion of this NFC West trilogy should be a thrilling one. These teams met twice in the span of 32 days in November and December and put on two fascinating shows.
In Week 11, the Seahawks traveled to LA and fell to the Rams 21-19. Just over a month later, in Week 16, the two teams played a 38-37 thriller, which included one of the strangest two-point conversions in NFL history and Sam Darnold seeming to get the big game monkey off his back.
The Seahawks actually haven’t lost since that Week 11 tilt with the Rams. Winners of eight in a row, Seattle is the hottest team in the league right now. They dispatched another rival, the San Francisco 49ers, last week, and now they are on the verge of their first Super Bowl since 2014 (which may, ironically, be a rematch with the Patriots).
Matthew Stafford in the Rams won a Super Bowl just four seasons ago, and as recently as Week 12, they looked like the best team around. However, losses to the Carolina Panthers, Seahawks, and Atlanta Falcons followed, as did too-close playoff wins over those Panthers and the Chicago Bears.
While anything can happen in a division game, especially the third time around, the states of these two squads are just too far apart right now. The Rams’ defense was excellent early in the season, but it hasn’t been great down the stretch. Teams have scored 27 or more points on them in five of the last eight games.
On the Seahawks' side, they are well-rested and firing on all cylinders on both sides of the ball. And as is the policy of the NFL Conference Championship Round picks, predictions, and odds column, we now believe in Darnold in big games. We’ll take the Seahawks to walk into the Super Bowl as well.
Pick: Seahawks 31-24
