Pats reach fifth straight AFC title game

The New England Patriots came in and took care of business on Saturday, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs by a score of 27-20.

The Patriots were back to being healthy again on Saturday, with wide receiver Julian Edelman returning from his broken left foot, left tackle Sebastian Vollmer coming back from an ankle sprain, and tight end Rob Gronkowski able to play after being questionable and missing practices leading up to the game.

Tom Brady had his weapons back and the New England Patriots are heading to their fifth straight AFC championship game. “It’s hard to do”.

It was in last year’s conference final that controversy erupted over the Patriots using under-inflated footballs, one that led the NFL to issue Brady a four-game suspension only to have the superstar quarterback take the issue to federal court.

The Patriots (12-5) will oppose the victor of tomorrow’s AFC Divisional playoff matchup between the Denver Broncos and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Up 7-3, the Patriots went to work on that lead with a 3rd and goal touchdown dive of 1 yard by Brady. The Chiefs managed to score a touchdown to close the gap to 27-20 but with 1:13 left it seemed too late. Edelman had 10 catches for 100 yards and Gronkowski, had 83 yards on seven catches with two touchdowns.

“When you get “11” back, it makes things out there easier – not just a couple players but for everybody man”, said receiver Keshawn Martin, who had two catches for 57 yards. The Patriots rushed for fewer than 50 yards as a team, but they didn’t need it. Alex Smith threw for over 200 yards and had a touchdown for the Chiefs, but it wasn’t enough to give them the win.

“The chemistry was clicking”, Gronkowski said.

The big discussion after the game wasn’t Brady’s accomplishments, but how Kansas City’s head coach Andy Reid continued with his ineptitude of clock management for yet another game.

Then Reid said, “We wanted to get a play off. There was 2:20 on the clock”.

Palmer completed 25-of-41 passes for 349 yards, including an 8-yard touchdown pass to Michael Floyd to open the scoring and a 9-yard TD toss to Floyd with 3:44 remaining in the fourth quarter to give Arizona a 17-13 lead. The 42-yard pass from Brady to Keshawn Martin on the Patriots’ second touchdown drive, in the second quarter, was the biggest of the day.

The Patriots aced their test, and the result was a return to the offensive efficiency and production of the first 10 games, when the Patriots ripped off 10 wins in a row.

“It took everything we got”, Brady said. “They battled like insane and came up a little short, so we’ll be a better team for it next year”. The Chiefs didn’t allow more than 22 points in any game and yielded 11.6 per game during their winning streak, also forcing at least one turnover in each game. He’s an incredible coach, and I’m lucky to have him.

They also became the second team ever to make five straight conference championship games, joining the 1973-77 Raiders.

The Chiefs were not exactly very bad in this game, but they were not good.

But as we’ve seen with the Patriots, those plays don’t happen without Edelman on the field, extending drives that had routinely sputtered when he was out. The Patriots were without Gronkowski for three playoff games from 2012-2013 and they lost two of them.

The good news for Edelman is that the foot didn’t go.