Jan 18, 2025, 07:50 PM ET

The divisional round of the NFL playoffs kicked off on Saturday afternoon with the Chiefs topping the Texans 23-14 to advance to the AFC Championship Game. What are the lessons from each divisional round matchup, and what’s next for these teams?

We asked NFL analyst Ben Solak and national insider Dan Graziano to help size up each game and look forward from all angles. For Texans-Chiefs, Ben answered one big remaining question and Dan judged the legitimacy of one potential overreaction.

Let’s jump in, making sense of the Chiefs’ win and Travis Kelce‘s big performance.

Chiefs 23, Texans 14

Overreaction? None of these other games matter; the Chiefs are going to win the Super Bowl again.

It’s not an overreaction. Look, their next opponent — either the Ravens or Bills — will be better than the Texans. But you could make the case that neither the Bills nor the Ravens have edge rushers as good as Houston’s unit, and the Chiefs’ biggest offensive weakness is their tackle play. The Chiefs managed to weather the Danielle Hunter/Will Anderson Jr. storm and advance to the next round, where they will play in the AFC Championship Game for the inconceivable seventh year in a row (and at home for the sixth time in those seven years).

Whoever comes out of Sunday night’s game, be it Baltimore or Buffalo, is likely to be more physically exhausted as a result of the difficulty of their divisional-round matchup — and the Chiefs will have an extra day of rest. Also consider that this was the Chiefs’ rust game. Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and most of the Chiefs’ superstar regulars hadn’t played since Christmas, and the offense looked like it was getting back into the rhythm of live game action during the first half. That was the Texans’ chance to jump on them and take advantage of the rust, and all Houston could manage was three field goal attempts, one of which it missed.

You can be sick of the Chiefs. You can be bored with the Chiefs. You can point out any number of reasons they’re not as good as the team they’ll play next week. But what you can’t dispute is that they’ve played 17 games this season that they were actually trying to win, and they’ve won 16 of them. Buffalo (who beat them in the one loss in that stretch) or Baltimore will go into Kansas City next week burdened with the ghosts and memories of painful playoff losses to Mahomes & Co. as recently as last season. It’s going to be a lot to overcome.

And while the Lions and Eagles can make a strong case to beat the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, it’s tough to feel good about that. Thanos claimed to be inevitable but was not. Mahomes has made no such claim … but watch him throw a touchdown pass to Kelce while being sacked and falling forward at a 45-degree angle, and tell me whether he even has to say it. — Graziano

The lingering question: Can Kelce do this two more times?

While it may feel like Kelce always does this in January, this Saturday’s performance was perhaps his best postseason level-up we’ve ever seen. Kelce had 62 yards after the catch in his 7-catch, 117-yard, 1-touchdown performance — his most YAC in a game this season. He had 30 YAC over expectation, the most in any game of his past two seasons, per NFL Next Gen Stats. He looked spry and fresh, like the clock was turned back a few years. (In reality, it was likely the two weeks off from playing football that put some pep back into Kelce’s step.)

Kelce ended the day with a whopping 66% of Mahomes’ 177 passing yards on a cool 32% target rate. The passing offense ran through him as the Chiefs avoided the elite cornerback due of Derek Stingley Jr. and Kamari Lassiter, instead picking on slot cornerback Myles Bryant and linebackers Henry To’oTo’o and Azeez Al-Shaair. It was a great game plan, and it was conditional on having an elite pass-catching tight end.

So Kelce dominated in the playoffs. Of course he did. But this was just the eighth 100-plus-yard game for a tight end at age 35 or older. What he just did was exceptional, and it’s unreasonable to expect him to deliver 100-yard performances in the AFC Championship Game and beyond.

Can receiver Hollywood Brown pull down a deep target next week (like the one he dropped Saturday)? Can wideout DeAndre Hopkins show up with a couple of those contested catches over the middle? Or will the Chiefs continue to run their passing offense through a 35-year-old tight end who doesn’t move like he once did? And would anyone be able to stop Kelce and Mahomes anyway? — Solak

What’s next: The Chiefs will play at home against either the Bills or Ravens next Sunday, Jan. 26, at 6:30 p.m. ET (CBS) in the AFC Championship Game. Kansas City beat the Ravens 27-20 in Week 1 when Baltimore tight end Isaiah Likely came down out of bounds on what would have been a game-tying TD catch. But K.C. lost 30-21 to the Bills in November — its only loss this season with starters playing.