Patriots earn 5th straight AFC title trip

He coached deep into the playoffs, as he often did with the Eagles.

January 16, 2016; Foxborough, MA; New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski (87) celebrates his first-half touchdown against the Kansas City Chiefs at Gillette Stadium. The Patriots advanced to their fifth consecutive AFC championship game. Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia had been mentioned as possible head coaching candidates.

But Edelman’s return seemed to have the biggest impact on Saturday, when Brady threw his way 16 times – including the in second, third and fourth plays of the game.

New England had drives of 80, 98 and 69 yards against a timid Kansas City defense in a 27-20 victory. Brady is clearly better, stats don’t lie, when the game is on the line, you want Tom.

The Chiefs could not get another possession – although they came close when the Patriots tried passing for a first down, and Tom Brady’s pass deflected off two players and into the hands of wide receiver Julian Edelman for a first down. While this game wasn’t exactly a great ending to the Chiefs’ season, there’s a lot to be proud of when it comes to how this team performed in 2015. Then, with first-and-goal and 2:33 left, the Chiefs allowed 25 seconds to expire before the two-minute warning, and several more seconds to lapse before scoring. “If they had taken two more timeouts and even if we punted the ball back there clean, they’re out of timeouts but probably in the neighborhood of 45 seconds or so left, somewhere in that ballpark, which is a decent amount of time”. He then has a shot at his 5th Super Bowl title. The atmosphere was festive, with the home side clearly happy to host another mid-January post-season game.

The victory sends Brady to his 10th AFC Championship Game next Sunday against either Denver or Pittsburgh. Manning retook the starting job from Brock Osweiler and leads Denver against an injury-ravaged Steelers team that will be without All-Pro wide receiver Antonio Brown, who suffered a concussion in last week’s wild-card win over the Bengals. If the Steelers win, New England is home.

Call them The Questionables because there was just a 50-50 chance they would play in their AFC divisional playoff game Saturday. But in the end, New England aggressively took an early lead it never surrendered.

Rob Gronkowski’s two touchdown catches gave him eight for his playoff career, the most of any tight end. Sometimes, you need to get knocked down to only make your hunger grow. “And that game means a lot, so we’ve got to try to get as healthy as we can and see if we can put together our best game of the year”. Jeremy Maclin caught just two balls on the afternoon while limited by an ankle injury, leaving Smith without the receiving options to move the ball efficiently down the field against an effective Patriots secondary. As he walked out of the Patriots locker room, Edelman was not limping or in any kind of protective wear. “They battled like insane and came up a little short, so we’ll be a better team for it next year”.

On a play that began at the Patriots’ 40, running back Knile Davis lost control of the football after catching a pass over the middle and the Patriots recovered the fumble. The injuries and miscues and time management problems proved to be too much to overcome, leaving Kansas City with another bitter ending to a memorable season.

“Awesome, amazing. You couldn’t ask for anything better”, says Bryan Valenti of Manchester.