THE HFL CRIMSON CHRONICLE

Cincinnati's perfect season is over. The Bengals, 17-0 since September, out-gained Houston 362 yards to 299 in the AFC Championship and lost 29-14 — Nicholas Battle threw four interceptions, one shy of his five-pick regular-season finale, and four different Texans defenders each intercepted one. In the NFC, Green Bay held off Washington 22-21, Micah Parsons had two sacks, and Jayden Daniels scored three touchdowns without one of them coming from further than nine yards out. The HFL Championship is set: Houston at Green Bay, a rematch of a Week 4 game the Packers won by two points on the Texans' own field.

Conference Championship Scoreboard

Four teams played. Two go home, and two meet in two weeks for the league championship.

Around the League

The All-HFL Weekly Team

Two games, and the honor roll is built straight from their box scores.

Streaks & Trends

• Cincinnati's 17-0 regular season is over as a playoff run. The Bengals beat Tennessee 23-0 in the divisional round before Houston eliminated them in the championship.
• Nicholas Battle threw four interceptions in the AFC Championship, seven days after throwing five in the divisional round win over Tennessee's opposite number — his second four-or-more-interception game in the Chronicle's last two issues.
• Four different Texans defenders intercepted a pass — Denzel Ward, Tre'von Moehrig, Mack Wilson Sr and Nick Bolton, one each.
• Washington has now played back-to-back one-point playoff games — a 35-34 divisional-round win over Arizona, then a 22-21 conference-championship loss to Green Bay.
• Jayden Daniels scored three touchdowns without a pass or run longer than nine yards on the drives that produced them.
• Cincinnati out-gained its opponent in both of its playoff games — by 125 yards against Tennessee, by 63 against Houston — and still lost the second one.

Record Book Watch

Nothing in the tracked single-game top fives moved this week. Nicholas Battle's four interceptions and Jayden Daniels's three total touchdowns both sit outside their categories' tracked top fives.

Feature Story: The Perfect Season Ends in the Championship Round

The number that decided it was four. Nicholas Battle went 22-for-37 for 252 yards and two touchdowns — a perfectly ordinary passing day on paper — but threw four interceptions, matched one-for-one by four different Houston defenders: Denzel Ward, Tre'von Moehrig, Mack Wilson Sr and Nick Bolton. It is the second time in the Chronicle's last two issues that Battle has thrown four or more interceptions in a single game; the first came in Week 18, a five-pick afternoon Cincinnati still won by four points against a Baltimore team well out of playoff contention. This time the opponent was a conference championship, and there was no recovering from it.

Quintin Warner did not need a huge day to take advantage: 19-for-22 for 266 yards and three touchdowns, spread across Bijan Robinson, Jordan Addison and Zay Flowers, with only one interception of his own. Jason Sanders made all three of his field goals. Houston is headed to its first HFL Championship as the fourth seed in its conference, the lowest surviving seed left in either bracket by the time the Bengals went home.

Cincinnati finishes the year 17-0 in the regular season, a mark that stood alone in league history when Denver matched it and then lost it on Wildcard Weekend. The Bengals carried that record two rounds deeper than Denver did, and it still ended the same way every unbeaten season in this league's history has ended: with a loss, just later than usual.

Building Something: Washington

Washington won the NFC East at 15-2, beat Tampa Bay and Arizona by a combined four points to reach the conference championship, and lost that game by one more. Anthony Richardson Sr closed his season 174 yards and a touchdown without an interception, and DeVonta Smith caught eight passes for 68 yards and the Commanders' only offensive touchdown of the day. Jonathan Greenard, Mike Hall Jr and Jalen Thompson combined for four sacks across the divisional and championship rounds. Washington's own accounting says it out-gained its conference-championship opponent by 44 yards. None of it was enough by one point, which is a different kind of season than the ones spent losing by more.

Press Row & Transaction Wire

Rookie Watch

The rookie quarterback race is over for the season. It did not end the way seventeen straight weeks suggested it would.

Nicholas Battle, QB, Bengals. Twenty-two completions on thirty-seven attempts for 252 yards and two touchdowns, with four interceptions in the game that ended his team's season. He finishes his rookie year 17-0 as a regular-season starter, a mark no rookie quarterback in this league has matched, before the two games that count differently than the other seventeen ended his season one round short of the title game.

HFL Championship Preview — Week 22

One game left. Houston (11-6, the AFC's four seed) plays Green Bay (16-1, the NFC's one seed), winner take all.

Jenna's Picks — Conference Championships: 1-1

Packers over Commanders was right, by the same one point the actual game was decided by. Bengals over Texans was not, and it was the same reasoning that has now failed twice this postseason: pick the better record, stop thinking. Cincinnati's record said everything except how many interceptions its quarterback would throw. The postseason is 6-5; the season total is 208-73-1.

Questions from the Desk

No letters reached the desk this week, so these three questions are the Chronicle's own and are labelled as such. The real mailbag runs with your name on it.

League Poll

Last issue's poll asked which conference championship readers were more excited for. Two votes went to Houston getting a shot at the league's last perfect team; one went to somebody finally beating a one seed on the road. Both came true in the same game — Houston, playing at Cincinnati, beat the Bengals by 15.