BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills kick off their playoff run against the Denver Broncos at 1 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 12 at Highmark Stadium. Here's how to watch, stream, and listen to the game.
The game's on 4! The Bills-Broncos game will air on WIVB in the Buffalo market. The rest of the country will see the game on their local CBS affiliate. The top CBS broadcast crew of Jim Nantz and Tony Romo will call the game, along with Tracy Wolfson and Jay Feely.
Coverage begins at 11 a.m. with Buffalo Kickoff Live on the CW23 and switches to WIVB at 11:30 a.m. Be sure to catch News 4 Sports+ Sunday night at 10:30 p.m. on the CW23.
Leading up to the game, we're also bringing you special playoff editions of Buffalo Kickoff Live from 7-8 p.m. Thursday and 7-7:30 p.m. Friday, both on WIVB and WIVB.com.
The game will be available on Paramount+; a free trial is available. It should also be accessible via fuboTV and YouTube TV.
The game will air locally on WGR 550 with Chris Brown and Eric Wood on the call and Sal Capaccio as the sideline reporter. On SiriusXM, the game will be on channels 85 and 225.
News 4’s Josh Reed and Carl Jones will anchor our coverage. They are joined by Thad Brown from our sister station in Rochester, WROC. Sal Capaccio from WGR 550, Tim Graham from The Athletic and Matt Parrino from Syracuse.com round out the team coverage.
The Bills are big favorites at home, where they went 8-0 this season. The Bills are listed as 8.5-point favorites on FanDuel SportsBook as of Tuesday.
The Broncos finished third in the AFC West at 10-7 and made the playoffs as the #7 seed. As John Murphy noted in his column, Denver went just 2-5 against teams that made the playoffs. To be fair, the Bills only went 2-3 against opponents that made the playoffs, but they took down the top seeds in both conferences. Denver's wins were against the Buccaneers in Week 3 and the Chiefs backups last week.
Still, this has been an impressive turnaround for Sean Payton's Broncos, who ended the NFL's second-longest playoff drought at eight seasons. This was a team that released quarterback Russell Wilson in March and took on the largest dead cap hit in NFL history to do so. More than $89 million of their $252 million salary cap space is dead money, accounted to players no longer on the roster. Rookie quarterback Bo Nix was drafted 12th overall -- and was the sixth quarterback off the board.
Nix showed promise in his rookie season, but the Broncos thrived on defense. Nix's offense finished 19th in yards per game and yards per play, 13th in third-down conversion percentage, and seventh in red zone percentage. But on defense, Denver was second in yards per play allowed. The unit was equally proficient against the run (2nd best) and the pass (3rd best) and snagged 25 takeaways, tied for seventh-most. Cornerback Patrick Surtain II, the son of the Dolphins star, is one of the top players at his position in the NFL.
But, coming to Buffalo could be a rude awakening for a Broncos team that was 4-5 on the road this season and lost two consecutive road games in Weeks 16 and 17 before waxing the Chiefs' backups at home last week.
If the Bills beat the Broncos, they'll be home again in the Divisional Round. The top-seeded Chiefs will face the lowest remaining seed, and the Bills will face the highest remaining seed.
If seeding holds, the Bills would get a rematch against the Ravens; however, if Pittsburgh upsets Baltimore, the Bills would face the Texans-Chargers winner.
