The Broncos can find out in a hurry how much they’ve really progressed from last season.

With Buffalo winning 27-24 at Jacksonville on Sunday afternoon and the Los Angeles Chargers losing 16-3 at New England on Sunday night, that assured the Broncos will face the Bills in a divisional playoff Saturday at Empower Field at Mile High. The game will be at 2:30 p.m. or 6 p.m., with the time and television network announced Monday night.

The Bills blasted Denver 31-7 at home in a wild-card playoff game last January after a regular season in which the Broncos went 10-7 and made the playoffs for the first time in nine years. The Broncos this season went 14-3 and have the No. 1 seed in the AFC and a bye in the wild-card round.

The Broncos entered Sunday knowing they would play the lowest remaining seed following the wild-card round. The Bills, who went 12-5 in the regular season, came in as the No. 6 seed and upset the No. 3 Jaguars, who were 14-3. But a Broncos-Bills rematch wasn’t assured until the No. 7 Chargers, who came in 11-6, fell to the No. 2 Patriots, who went 14-3 in the regular season but lost on a tiebreaker to Denver for the No. 1 seed.

Had both the Chargers and Bills lost Sunday, the Broncos would have had to wait for a winner to emerge Monday night with No. 5 Houston at No. 4 Pittsburgh. Had the Broncos ended up facing the winner of that game, their divisional round game would have been scheduled for next Sunday.

Despite the difference in seeds, the Bills were installed Sunday night as an early 1.5-point favorite for Saturday’s game.

Sean Payton is 1-1 against the Bills since becoming Denver’s coach in 2023. The Broncos upset Buffalo, a 7.5-point favorite, 24-22 on “Monday Night Football” on Nov. 13, 2023, at Highmark Stadium on a 36-yard field goal by Wil Lutz on the final play.

With the win over the Jaguars, the Bills snapped an eight-game road playoff losing streak.

“We were aware of what the talk was,’’ Buffalo coach Sean McDermott said after the game. “But at the end of the day, the game is decided between the white lines, and our guys know that.”

Bills quarterback Josh Allen had been 0-4 on the road in the playoffs. After the game, he shrugged off a question about having broken through on the road.

“To me, it doesn’t mean a whole lot,’’ said Allen, who starred in college at Wyoming. “Means we were good on our communication on offense. Defense made plays, obviously. Now we have a chance to do it again.”

That will be against the Broncos, who were No. 2 in the NFL in total defense and No. 3 in scoring defense during the regular season. The Bills were No. 4 in the NFL in both total and scoring offense.

Allen, the 2024 NFL MVP, was in the conversation to win the award again during a season in which he threw for 3,668 yards with 25 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Against Jacksonville, he completed 28 of 35 passes for 273 yards and a touchdown without an interception.

Allen took some hard hits against the Jaguars, including one that resulted in him going into the medical tent after scoring on a 2-yard run in the second quarter. But he insisted after the game that he was fine.

“It was more of a precautionary thing,’’ Allen said. “Just got rolled up on, and they wanted to take a quick look, but we’re good.”

Allen, who barely played at Wyoming in 2015 before starring for the Cowboys in 2016 and 2017, will play his fourth overall game in Colorado. He played college games at Colorado State in 2016 and at Air Force in 2017. He has played just one game against the Broncos in Denver, throwing for 359 yards and two touchdowns in a 48-19 win by Buffalo in 2020.

The Broncos and Bills, who both began play in the AFL in 1960 before both joined the NFL in 1970, will meet for just the third time in the playoffs and for the first time in Denver. The Bills defeated the Broncos 10-7 at Buffalo in the 1991 AFC Championship Game in their first postseason meeting.