The NFL’s six-game Wild Card Weekend kicks off Saturday with a pair of AFC contests, and new customers using our top online sportsbook promo codes to bet on the games can collect up to combined $6,450 in welcome bonuses (see below).

 

NFL Wild Card Weekend: Claim your welcome bonuses, top sportsbook promotions

 

Saturday’s wild card action begins at 4:30 p.m. ET in Houston with the AFC’s fourth-seeded Texans hosting the fifth-seeded Los Angeles Chargers on CBS/Paramount+.

That’s followed by the AFC North rubber match between the sixth-seeded Pittsburgh Steelers and third-seeded Baltimore Ravens at 8 p.m. on Amazon Prime Video.

With the NFL’s 14-team postseason tournament commencing, now is the time to take advantage of our best sportsbook promo and bonus code welcome offers.

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• > Place your initial bet on Chargers-Texans or Steelers-Ravens or another qualifying market. 

 

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Best NFL bets for Saturday’s wild card games: Take favored Chargers, underdog Steelers

In Saturday’s first matchup, the visiting Chargers are top online sportsbook-consensus 3-point favorites (-155 moneyline) over the host Texans (+130) with a game total hovering around 41.5 points.

Houston won a second-straight AFC South title this season, but QB C.J. Stroud and Co. were in much better form — especially offensively — last winter when they routed the Cleveland Browns 45-14 to kick off the 2023-24 Wild Card Weekend.

This season’s Texans rank 19th in scoring (21.9 points per game) and 22nd in total yards (319.7 per game). That’s far from ideal opening the playoffs against the Bolts’ top-ranked scoring defense (17.7) and a more-than-capable QB in Justin Herbert.

The Chargers tied for the league’s best ATS record (12-5) during the regular season, and you can get them laying a field goal with reduced juice (-102) at FanDuel.

Playing the under (42.5 at Caesars) here also is recommended with the two defensive-oriented teams a combined 20-14 to the under this season.

In Saturday’s second matchup, the host Ravens have moved to 9.5-point-consensus favorites with a game total of 43.5 points. Baltimore was a consensus -520 on the moneyline as of Friday while Pittsburgh was catching +385 odds.

And despite the Ravens’ 34-17 rout of the visiting Steelers in Week 16 — the second of four straight regular season-ending losses for the Steel City Crew — I’m going to roll with Mike Tomlin’s team and the points (+9.5 at BetMGM) to at least keep things reasonably close.

Prior to Baltimore’s Week 16 win, the previous nine Steelers-Ravens matchups were decided by seven or fewer points, including Pittsburgh’s 18-16 home victory in Week 11.