FOXBORO – Like bone-chilling winds and unplowed streets, watching the Patriots in the AFC Championship game has become an annual slice of January life in New England.
Get ready for another taste of the game that serves as the final step on the road to the Super Bowl. Thanks to Saturday night’s 35-14 thumping of the Tennessee Titans, the Patriots will play in the AFC Championship game for the seventh straight season.
Now [...]
FOXBORO – Like bone-chilling winds and unplowed streets, watching the Patriots in the AFC Championship game has become an annual slice of January life in New England.
Get ready for another taste of the game that serves as the final step on the road to the Super Bowl. Thanks to Saturday night’s 35-14 thumping of the Tennessee Titans, the Patriots will play in the AFC Championship game for the seventh straight season.
Now it’s up to the Pittsburgh Steelers to match serve.
The Steelers host the Jacksonville Jaguars Sunday with the winner coming to Gillette Stadium next. It’s not easy to trust a Steelers team that is as talented as it is undisciplined but New England-Pittsburgh is the game the NFL and its fans want to see.
It will be interesting to see if Ben Roethlisberger, Le`Veon Bell and Antonio Brown can fight past the Jacksonville defense. They'd be wise to follow the lead of the Patriots who've mastered winning these divisional round playoff games.
Tom Brady and crew have hosted the AFC title game in four of the last six seasons. The other two came in Denver. Three of the six games ended with celebrations at midfield (2016, 2014, 2011), a scene the Patriots and their fans are aiming to repeat next Sunday night.
The Pats punched their latest ticket out of the divisional round against a Tennessee team that simply wasn’t ready for prime time. The Titans weren’t the total pushovers that many expected but the combination of ill-timed penalties and mistakes, plus not enough firepower from quarterback Marcus Mariota, doomed the Titans.
To their credit, the two touchdown underdogs scored first on an impressive 11-play, 95-yard drive. Mariota beat the Pats with his legs on a few plays and then tossed a sweet pass to Corey Davis over a torched Malcolm Butler for the score.
But the Patriots answered quickly, with both authority and a little help from the Titans.
Brady warmed up (5-of-5 on the drive) with a short pass to Dion Lewis going for 31 yards. A few plays later James White took a flip from Brady and scampered around left end for a touchdown.
The Pats got the ball back quickly and Brady stayed with his running backs as Lewis and White combined to do most of the work. White, who missed the regular season’s final two games clearly to just get his legs back, scored again to give the Patriots the lead for good.
The key drive of the game told you all you needed to know about the Titans. After pinning the Pats at their own 14-yard line and forcing a punt, Brynden Trawick was called for a neutral zone infraction. While that penalty wasn’t totally clear cut, the Titans helped New England with two more penalties as the Pats drove 91 yards on 16 plays for another TD and a 21-7 lead.
That basically served as the knockout punch. The Titans didn’t show up in the second half, much to the delight of a frigid sellout crowd that was only left to start planning next Sunday's AFC Championship tailgate parties.
We can report that Brady didn’t appear distracted in any way by the media reports of friction running amok in the franchise. Instead he played like the likely NFL Most Valuable Player. Brady recorded his record 13th playoff game of 300 or more passing yards and also passed his boyhood idol Joe Montana and set a record with 10 playoff games with three or more TD passes.
Now it’s time for a legitimate playoff opponent to come to Foxboro. The Patriots have beaten the Steelers three times in the last two seasons but each win came with an asterisk. In all three games Roethlisberger, Bell or Brown either didn’t play or was hurt in the early going.
Hopefully, this time both heavyweights show up at full strength in what will be the biggest game – and test – of the season. The good news about a Patriots-Steelers (or Jaguars) matchup is that when Bill Belichick tells the media this week that his team is getting ready to play the best team it’s faced all season, he’ll actually be telling the truth.
The Coach muttered the same words last week about the Titans and no one really took him seriously. This time it’s for real.