Patriots to 5th straight AFC title game, beat Chiefs 27-20

Today’s New England Patriots vs Kansas City Chiefs NFL football game has a start time schedule of 4:35pm eastern time and airs on TV channel CBS.

The New England Patriots are off to a solid in the AFC Divisional Playoffs, and lead the Chiefs 14- after two quarters.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Rob Gronkowski doesn’t buy the notion that familiarity will automatically mean success for the New England Patriots in the AFC championship game next weekend. The team settled for a 34 yard Cairo Santos field goal, cutting the Pats lead to 7-3. The momentum went right back to the Pats.

“You’re not rooting too hard – whatever happens happens”, Brady said. Sure, that brought them to within one score, but it also chewed up 5:16.

Any resemblance between the undermanned Patriots offense that limped to the end of the regular season and the fully-manned Patriots offense of Saturday night is, as they say, purely coincidental. The Chiefs are riding in an 11-game winning streak.

The Chiefs had a chance to make it close before halftime, but some poor clock management cost them and they had to kick another field goal, making it 14-6 at the half. Brady also ran one in, although it was his 10-yard run before the touchdown that really fired us up.

Gronkowski set the franchise and the league records for playoff touchdown passes by a tight end. Brady fired, the ball was caught and the Patriots moved ahead 11 yards. On fourth down and 20 at their own 4-yard line, with no time outs left in the final minute of regulation time, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers found a receiver to keep the game alive. The Chiefs wasted great second-quarter starting field position, at the New England 36, by losing a yard over the next three plays.

Kansas City answered with Alex Smith connecting on a 10-yard touchdown pass to Albert Wilson to lift the Chiefs within 21-13. “We had 20 seconds”, Reid said. The veteran signal-caller completed eight of 11 passes on the game-opening, 80-yard drive, death by a thousand paper cuts, culminating in an eight-yard, back-shoulder touchdown pass to Gronkowski that had the hosts up seven before the contest was five minutes old.

The same could be said about the entire Patriots team after this impressive performance.

Smith finished 29-of-50 for 241 yards and ran for 44 yards. Neither and neither were linebackers Justin Houston and Hali. But there was confusion when Patriots wide receiver Matthew Slater thought New England could choose the direction in which the team could kick.

Beyond bad luck, there was no shortage of criticism for Andy Reid after the Chiefs seemed to burned timeouts in the first half. He forced a fumble…. Whether they can find holes in the Patriots defence remains to be seen – it certainly won’t be as easy this week as it was against Houston. The Chiefs were thwarted in their bid to reach the conference final for the first time since 1993. This was the first playoff meeting between the two original AFL teams…. It was his second career postseason game with 100-yards receiving and put Tom Brady over 300 yards passing, his 9th career 300-yard postseason game, tying Peyton Manning for most all-time.