New England Patriots, Bill Belichick did just 'enough' to advance

Most teams advancing to the conference championship game would be ecstatic, almost regardless of how they got the job done.

Bill Belichick's championship-driven Patriots are not most teams.

New England advanced to its NFL-record sixth straight AFC title game with Saturday night's 34-18 dismissal of the dismal Texans at Gillette Stadium.

What looked on the final scoreboard as a comfortable victory was far from it. And that left Belichick, Tom Brady and the rest of the members of AFC's No. 1 seed focused on improvement rather than celebration in the postgame locker room.

"We ended up making enough plays to win," Belichick said, praising the fight put up by Bill O'Brien's Texans while focusing on the litany of mistakes made by his own team.

Brady, who threw just two interceptions in 12 regular season contents, threw a pair of interceptions against Houston as the No. 4-ranked New England passing attack never got going with much consistency against the NFL's No. 1 defense in terms of yards allowed.

Dion Lewis was the playmaking star. The passing back became the first player in postseason history, and just the third player overall, to record rushing, receiving and return touchdowns in a single game. But, Lewis also had a costly fumble on a kickoff return to set up a Houston short-field score that had New England clinging to a 14-13 lead in the second quarter.

Jadeveon Clowney, Whitney Mercilus and the Texans front gave the Patriots offensive line fits and hit Brady with alarming frequency and physicality. As such, New England held just a one score lead early in the fourth quarter of what many expected to be an easy blowout.

"They played well. They did a great job defensively. They knocked the ball off of us. We fumbled, they intercepted us, we had too many balls out and we're lucky we didn't lose more than we did," Belichick said, noting that even the success in the passing game even came in part to a "few prayers" Brady completed.

Brady's interceptions have him now tied with Brett Favre (30) for most in NFL postseason history and his 68.6 rating for the game was barely half of his 112.2 rating during the 2016 regular season.

"They had some good scheme stuff that worked. They have good rushers and they had some good guys in coverage, so they had a pretty good scheme. It was a lot of things, and then when you add our poor execution on top of that, then you add our turnovers on top of that, it doesn't feel great because we worked pretty hard to play a lot better than we played. I give them a lot of credit, but we're going to have to play better on offense," Brady said.

Belichick made it clear the room for improvement is widespread for the Patriots this week as they prepare for next Sunday evening's AFC title game at Gillette Stadium against either the Chiefs or Steelers.

"We're going to have to play better, coach better," Belichick concluded. "I don't think the coaching was all that good tonight, either. We have to play better, we have to coach better than we did tonight, or there won't be much left in our season. Hopefully we can do that and up our level of performance next week."

"Whoever we play next week is going to be a great football team and we're going to have to play better than we played tonight on offense," Brady agreed, far from celebrating his 23rd career postseason win as he advances to the AFC championship for the 11th time in his career.

"Pretty cool, pretty cool. Let's go win the AFC Championship Game. That would be very cool. That's what we've got to do."