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No surprise: New England Patriots in AFC title game again

By The Sports Xchange
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (12) celebrates a six-yard touchdown by running back James White (not pictured) in the second quarter of the AFC Divisional round playoff game against the Tennessee Titans at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts on January 13, 2018. Patriots won 35-14. Photo by Matthew Healey/UPI
1 of 5 | New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (12) celebrates a six-yard touchdown by running back James White (not pictured) in the second quarter of the AFC Divisional round playoff game against the Tennessee Titans at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts on January 13, 2018. Patriots won 35-14. Photo by Matthew Healey/UPI | License Photo

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- The defending-champion New England Patriots (14-3) advanced to their seventh straight AFC Championship Game thanks to Saturday night's 35-14 beatdown of the Titans at Gillette Stadium.

Thanks to the following afternoon's Jacksonville upset 45-42 win in Pittsburgh, that means a battle with the upstart Jaguars (12-6) this coming Sunday afternoon in Foxborough.

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Head coach Bill Belichick's team got back to within one game of another Super Bowl thanks to a balanced effort that saw quarterback Tom Brady's passing attack hit for 337 yards and three touchdowns against Tennessee, while New England's defense shut down the run and got to Marcus Mariota for a postseason franchise-record eight sacks. The offense went five-for-five on red-zone trips, while the defense held the Titans to just 5-of-15 on third downs including holding Tennessee without a first down for two-plus quarters as New England built a 21-7 halftime lead and then pulled away on the scoreboard.

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"I thought that was a real good effort by our team," Belichick said. "Guys played hard in all three phases, played hard for 60 minutes. Tennessee's a good team. We saw what happened last week in Kansas City when Kansas City had a lead at the half similar to the one that we had. Our guys did a real good job of kind of keeping their foot on the gas and keep pressing it. I look forward to playing next week and we'll see how that goes tomorrow, but it's good effort all week, good effort tonight and I'm proud of the team, proud of the players, proud of the way they competed and the effort and the toughness that they showed tonight against a good football team."

Brady earned his 27th career postseason victory - 11 more than Joe Montana's second-most all time - coming out of a bye week in which he, Belichick and owner Robert Kraft dealt with an ESPN The Magazine story that detailed a supposed "internal power struggle" behind the scenes with the Patriots. He will now play in his 12th AFC title game. The quarterback turned down the chance to use his latest impressive postseason performance as any sort of response or answer to the outside critics.

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"I've been around long enough; 18 years. There's been so many nice things said about me. That just goes with the territory," Brady said. "I just try to be consistent, show up and do the best I can do every week for the team and regardless of whether I'm the worst quarterback in the league or the best quarterback in the league or somewhere in between, it's just my job to do the best I can do for us every week. It was a good team win (against Tennessee). We're going to need another one next week. I'm looking forward to playing in the championship game."

As he works to get to his eighth Super Bowl, looking to defend last year's title and win three rings in a four-year span for the second time in his historic career, Brady is taking nothing for granted.

"I know how hard it is to get to this game. We're very blessed to do it," Brady said. "It takes a lot of things, a lot of good fortune, a lot of hard work, but obviously a lot of great blessings. I think our team has proven over the course of the year we can win important games against good teams and we did that (against Tennessee) and that's why you keep moving on. The reality of the NFL is what we did this week will have nothing to do with what happens next week. We're going to have to go repeat it, so you've got to get right back to work, right back to the process of trying to figure out how to break down our opponent. Everyone's got to feel good physically and mentally and go out there and try to cut it loose one more time in a huge game."

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Belichick's initial thoughts on Jacksonville aren't surprising. He sees a talented team that's worthy of its spot in the title game, even if it's not the marquee rematch with Pittsburgh that many, including the Steelers themselves, were probably expecting.

"We're kind of working our way through it here," Belichick said of scouting the Jaguars, a team New England faced in the preseason opener after a week of joint practice action in Foxborough. "We're not where we're going to be on Wednesday. We have a lot of work to do. We haven't seen them in quite a while, but obviously, they're well-coached. They have a lot of good players. We saw that from training camp. They've been in two close games and they've made a lot of critical plays in critical situations. They've made the plays they've had to make, and that's what you have to do at this time of year."

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Though NFL rules prohibit teams from hiring or even reaching agreements with coordinators from teams that remain in the postseason, it continues to appear that both Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels could be leaving New England for head coaching jobs when the season ends.

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Patricia, who spent the first-round bye interviewing with the Giants, Lions and Cardinals, reportedly is going to get the job in Detroit, where he'll work under general manager Bob Quinn, who worked in various roles in the Patriots' front office from 2000 until taking the Lions job in 2016.

Despite reports that the Lions' job is all but his at this point, Patricia downplayed the story in a Monday conference call as he began preparations for Sunday's AFC title game against the Jaguars.

"I'm really just in the same place as I was last week," Patricia explained. "I went through the process that the NFL allows us to go through and during the bye week I was able to have the opportunity to talk to a couple teams, which I did, and then quickly turned my focus to a very good Tennessee team and now I'm on to a very dangerous Jacksonville team. There's a process involved with that. There's things that the league sets out guidelines and I followed those when I could and fortunately, the good part about it for me is those are set up so that I can really focus on my job that I need to do and that's get ready for Jacksonville."

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McDaniels also interviewed with a trio of teams during the bye week, including the Giants, Bears and Colts. Reports now indicate that he will get his second chance as a head coach - McDaniels coached the Broncos for two seasons, going 8-8 in 2009 and then 3-9 before being fired a year later - in Indianapolis where he will bring his offensive system and prowess to young passer Andrew Luck.

REPORT CARD VS. TITANS

--PASSING OFFENSE: A-minus - Tom Brady shook off a slow start before completing eight straight passes on two second-quarter scoring drives to ignite another big playoff performance in which he completed 35-of-53 passes for 337 yards with three touchdowns and no sacks or interceptions for a 102.5 passer rating. WR Danny Amendola caught 11-of-13 throws that came his way for 112 yards, RB Dion Lewis had 79 yards on nine catches while TE Rob Gronkowski, RB James White and WR Chris Hogan all had touchdown receptions.

--RUSHING OFFENSE: B-plus - Facing the NFL's No. 4 rush defense, New England put forth a complementary rushing game led by Lewis' 15 carries for 62 yards (4.1 average). As a team (with kneeldowns removed), the Patriots ran 24 times for 102 yards (4.2 average), with both White and Brandon Bolden finding the end zone.

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--PASS DEFENSE: B - Though Marcus Mariota's statistics look OK, with the Titans passer completing 22-of-37 passes for 254 yards and a pair of touchdowns for a 98.3 passer rating, New England's pass defense was very good against Tennessee. The front piled up a postseason franchise-record eight sacks, while the back end helped hold the visitors to just five of 15 on third down. CB Stephon Gilmore was solid, not allowing a pass in his direction. CB Malcolm Butler was not as good, allowing both touchdowns to rookie receiver Corey Davis.

--RUSH DEFENSE: A-minus - A week after Derrick Henry had 156 yards in Kansas City, New England held the big Titans back to just 28 yards on 12 attempts (2.3 average) with a long of a mere 4 yards. That included stuffing Henry for a 5-yard loss on fourth-and-1 in the second quarter as the momentum snowballed for the Patriots. New England's 20th-ranked run defense has been on the uptick over the last month.

--SPECIAL TEAMS: C-minus - There weren't a lot of big plays in the kicking game, but New England wasn't overly efficient in the third phase. Stephen Gostkowski missed a 53-yard field-goal attempt to close out the second quarter. The Patriots had three of their four penalties in the kicking game. The usual tight kickoff coverage allowed Tennessee to start at the 25 or better after four of six kickoffs. Ryan Allen had just a 37.3 net with one touchback on four punts, while there wasn't anything special in the return game.

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--COACHING: A - Bill Belichick's team shook off a sluggish post-bye start on both sides of the ball and got things rolling in the second quarter. Offensively, that meant going up-tempo and utilizing the team's pass-catching running backs and slot target Danny Amendola to get things going. Defensively, the front was tough against the run and used a controlled pass rush to corral Mariota for eight sacks. With plenty of would-be distractions during the bye week including both coordinators interviewing for head coaching jobs and the ESPN story detailing a supposed "internal power struggle," Belichick did his usual impressive job keeping everything focused on the task at hand.

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