FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – The New England Patriots uncharacteristically stumbled down the stretch of the regular season, losing four of their final six games.
Then the defending champions battled through a wacky bye week that included the potential distraction of a Chandler Jones medical emergency that sent the Pro Bowl pass rusher to a local hospital. All-Pro tight end Rob Gronkowski also missed two days of practice, also reportedly sent to a hospital for an injection while dealing with knee and back injuries.
But when Saturday evening’s divisional playoff game rolled around, New England went to work as in the past.
Quarterback Tom Brady got his favorite slot receiver back as Julian Edelman returned from missing seven-plus games with a broken foot to lead the Patriots with 10 catches for 100 yards. Gronkowski notched a pair of touchdowns on his seven catches for 83 yards. And a much-maligned New England offense line that allowed Brady to be banged around over the previous two months held the dangerous Chiefs without a sack.
Sure the Patriots needed to handle a Kansas City onside kick and make a first down to secure the 27-20 win and advance to the AFC Championship Game for the record-tying fifth-straight year. But there was no mistaking that the Brady-led offense was back making plays and putting up points in a way many wondered whether it still could, even if it wasn’t quite back to early-season blowout standards.
“I’m really proud of our team,” coach Bill Belichick said. “We’ve kind of been battling along here for a few weeks and I thought we had a real good two weeks of preparation – not that we did very much last week on the field but in our meetings and our walkthroughs, just going over the things we went over I think it helped make us a better team.
“And then this week of practice was probably one of our best weeks ever in terms of focus and concentration, everybody being alert and on top of it.”
The win earns the No. 2-seeded Patriots a trip to Denver for Sunday’s AFC title game against Broncos. New England doesn’t have a great history of success in the Mile High City, including a 30-24 overtime loss earlier this season in which the Patriots blew a 21-7 early fourth quarter lead.
“It’s great to move on to the AFC Championship Game,” Belichick said. “It’s always an honor to be a part of that game. We’re excited about that. We’ll look forward get to work on them, try to have a good week and go out there and play our best game next Sunday.”
But that earlier loss was against a Broncos team then led by Brock Osweiler, who stepped in for an injured and struggling Peyton Manning. Manning was back under center last Sunday for the win over the Steelers and is expected to face off with Brady one more time – Brady vs. Manning XVII as it were – with a trip to Super Bowl 50 on the line.
The two future Hall of Famer quarterbacks have met three times previously in the AFC Championship, most recently after the 2013 season with Manning’s Broncos advancing. Manning actually has a 2-1 advantage over Brady in previous AFC title games.
“It will be fun to play another Peyton Manning-led team,” Brady said in his weekly interview with WEEI radio in Boston Monday morning.
Belichick admits it’s an altered test preparing for Manning this time around in Denver.
“I’d say the preparation is definitely different,” Belichick said as compared to in November. “Peyton has tremendous experience running this offense and having control of things at the line of scrimmage, more variations, more fluctuation in what they do as opposed to probably more plays that are called and run with Osweiler. [They’re] both good players obviously. We’ve had trouble with both of them so we’ll have to be ready for both guys.”
That preparation hit overdrive on Monday.
“It’s just all in on Denver and I’m sure today they’re pretty much all in on us,” Belichick concluded.
REPORT CARD vs. CHIEFS
–PASSING OFENSE: B-plus. Tom Brady got Julian Edelman (foot) back and used Rob Gronkowski in the middle of the field where he makes his best plays, and not surprisingly the Patriots passing offense got back on track. Brady threw every play of an opening 11-play drive to a touchdown. He got one third-down completion to get things rolling from Edelman and then another later on the drive by the big tight end before Gronkowski capped it with an 8-yard score. Twenty-four of Brady’s 42 attempts on the evening and 17 of his 28 completions went to either Edelman or Gronkowski. The slot receiver had a game-high 10 catches for 100 yards, while the All-Pro tight end hauled in seven balls for 83 yards and a pair of scores. Brady threw for 302 yards with the two touchdowns and no interceptions for a 103.5 rating. He was not sacked at all and only hit once, the combination of the quick passing attack and improved pass protection more than getting the job done against what can be a dangerous Chiefs front. It was a star-studded return to production for the Patriots passing attack.
–RUSHING OFFENSE: D. After trying to run early and often in the regular-season finale loss in Miami, the ground game was once again a major afterthought for the pass-first Patriots. New England didn’t attempt a run until a Steven Jackson carry with 38 seconds left in the first quarter. Jackson would end up the leading rusher with a mere 16 yards on six attempts (2.7 average) with an 8-yard long. Brady actually also had six rushing attempts, including a 10-yard long to set up his own 1-yard rushing score in the second quarter. As a team the Patriots ran just 14 times for 38 yards. The group wasn’t even given a chance to run out the clock when the Patriots had a two-score lead with just over six minutes to play in the game and threw the ball three straight times before a punt. In this playoff win the running game wasn’t even a complementary aspect of the offense, is a major afterthought and non-factor.
–PASS DEFENSE: B-minus. Kansas City’s Alex Smith is not exactly the kind of quarterback to take it to any secondary. And that’s probably a good thing for New England. The Chiefs played with a very gimpy Jeremy Maclin and still moved the ball relatively well while converting 12 of 20 third downs. Smith completed 29 of 50 passes for 246 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions for a 77.6 rating. Without his top target, Smith spread the ball around to 10 different targets on the evening. The most disappointing of those was budding tight end Travis Kelce, who had just 23 yards on his six receptions. Jason Avant came up the biggest with 69 yards on four catches, while Albert Wilson added 57 yards on five catches. Logan Ryan struggled a bit for the Patriots back end and the pass rush on the athletic Smith was inconsistent. It was another case of the job being done just well enough for the Patriots pass defense against a limited passing attack.
–RUN DEFENSE: C-plus. New England’s rush defense had been solid more often than not the last two months. But the group got pushed around a bit by Kansas City. Overall the Chiefs ran it 32 times for 135 yards (4.2 average) and a touchdown. The production was better in the first half, with Kansas City gaining 80 yards on just 15 attempts for a 5.3 average. Charcandrick West, Smith and Knile Davis all had runs of 11 yards or longer. West was the lead carrier with 17 attempts for 61 yards, though Davis gave the unit a nice second-half boost to total 30 yards on just six attempts. The Patriots played chunks of the final two quarters without linebackers Jamie Collins, Dont’a Hightower and Jerod Mayo, so in many ways the decent job done against the run is even more impressive. Still, the ground defense has room for improvement heading into a rematch with a Denver team that ran early and often in a meeting between the teams in November.
–SPECIAL TEAMS: B-minus. The big mistakes that plagued the Patriots kicking units down the stretch of the regular season were gone in the playoff opener. The only real mistake of the evening was a Danny Amendola unnecessary roughness call for head-high hit on a Chiefs cover player, trying to keep him from downing a punt. Ryan Allen had just a 26.3 net on three punts, but that was only slightly worse than the 28.3 of Kansas City’s Dustin Colquitt as each team did a nice job on punt returns, with Amendola notching a 22-yarder. Stephen Gostkowski hit his field goals from 40 and 32 yards, although only three of his six kickoffs resulted in touchbacks. The coverage units weren’t great for New England, allowing a 19-yard punt return and a 34-yard kickoff return. But Gronkowski did secure Kansas City’s onside kick attempt late to similarly secure the win. It wasn’t a banner day, but there were not glaring mistakes, either.
–COACHING: B. A lot went on in New England last week and Bill Belichick successfully guided his team through the distractions to a playoff win. That can’t be overlooked. The offensive game plan was tremendous, taking it to a solid Kansas City defense with a reignited passing attack from the get-go. While there is some question as to whether the Patriots could have run the ball to help close the game out, the rest of Josh McDaniels work was solid on the evening. Defensively, the Patriots took away Kansas City’s top threat in Kelce. The unit didn’t allow a ton of real big plays, the type that the Chiefs probably needed to pull off the upset. But the third down struggles on defense were certainly not what Matt Patricia was looking for. And Belichick had a pair of poor replay challenges that he lost, although the second may have been simply the coach using the red flag as an extra timeout while taking a shot at the review process. Overall, with Andy Reid’s team blowing it in terms of clock management, the Patriots looked like the better-coached team with the better all-around game plan after a potentially hazard-filled week.