Thirteen regular-season wins earned the Patriots the top seed in the AFC, but it's a different season now.
The ca endar’s been flipped.
So has the script.
“It’s different,” Patriots head coach Bill Belichick said. “There’s no other game on the schedule. It’s a one-game season. It’s not like that during the rest of the season. We’re in a different season now.”
Thirteen regular-season wins, one of them a 27-24 victory at Pittsburgh on Dec. 17 that gave them the tiebreaker advantage over the Steelers among them, earned the Patriots the top seed in the AFC and the first-round bye they’ve rid den into the NFL’s second season and Saturday night’s 8:15 kickoff with the fifth- seeded Tennessee Titans in a divisional playoff game at Gillette Stadium.
The winner advances to the AFC Championship game to face the team that emerges from Sunday after noon’s divisional-round game between third-seeded Jacksonville and the second- seeded Steelers in Pittsburgh. The conference title game will be played at the home of the highest surviv ing seed on Jan. 21 at 3:05 p.m.
The Patriots have put themselves in a position to host that game, but in order to do that they’ll have to get past a Titans team that, if nothing else, has proven it self to be resilient: Witness their 22-21 wild-card win over Kansas City during the Patriots’ playoff bye week, a game in which they rallied to erase an 18-point half time deficit on the road.
Overwhelming under dogs (by 13 points), the Titans’ head coach says that role suits his team just fine, thank you.
“I think our guys kind of like that role,” Mike Mularkey said. “It’s not a flashy team, it’s not sexy. It’s just a blue collar, come to work, see what happens when you do, compete, everybody compete for 60 minutes. See what the outcome’s going to be, don’t worry about predictors. That’s their job, we have a job to do.”
The task at hand? Win. Or wait ’til next year.
“The intensity, speed of the game,” Patriots special teams captain Matthew Slater, who’s appearing in his ninth straight postseason (his only miss came his rookie year) answered when asked the biggest different between regular-season and postseason football. “Every one’s playing with a great deal of urgency. When it comes to the football sea son, it’s literally do or die. You either find a way to get it done and play winning football or you hope to be back next season.”
“It’s a one-game sea son,” said Belichick. “I don’t know how much more pressure you can get than that.”
In seventh heaven?: The Patriots will take the field seeking a berth in their seventh consecutive AFC Championship game.
The Patriots broke a tie with the 1973-1977 Oak land Raiders in earning a sixth straight trip to the con ference championship last year. They’ve won two of the last three and gone 3-3 over that