New England Patriots To Meet Kansas City Chiefs In AFC Championship Game

Some things never change. Another year, another New England Patriots team on the verge of reaching the Super Bowl. The Patriots had no trouble with the upstart Los Angeles Chargers in the AFC Divisional Round matchup winning 41-28 on their home field. New England will face a stiff challenge from the Kansas City Chiefs who earned their berth in the conference championship game with a 31-13 win over the Indianapolis Colts. The winner of the Pats-Chiefs game will advance to the Super Bowl to face the winner of the NFC Championship Game between the Los Angeles Rams and New Orleans Saints.

The Patriots will head to Kansas City to make their eighth straight appearance in the AFC Championship game. It will be the 13th AFC Championship game appearance during the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick era. The Patriots faced the Chiefs earlier in the season, scrapping out a 3 point win as -3.5 home favorites on October 14, 2018. Following the victory over the Chargers, New England quarterback Tom Brady praised his team’s AFC Championship opponents while taking a shot at the Patriots’ ‘haters’:

“It’s going to be a good game. They’re a good team. We played them earlier this year. I know everybody thinks we suck and, you know, we can’t win any games, so we’ll see. It’ll be fun.”

For the Kansas City Chiefs, their appearance in the AFC Championship game has been a long time coming. The last time the Chiefs were in the conference title matchup was 1994 making for 25 years of postseason futility since then. During that stretch, Kansas City had been 1-11 SU overall and 0-6 SU at home during the postseason but quarterback Patrick Mahomes says that the ‘new era’ Chiefs are confident and prepared:

“We’re such a different team. We have such young players. We have such confidence we’re going to win every single game.”

Kansas City wasn’t really tested in their AFC Divisional game against Indianapolis. They shot out to a 17-0 lead before the Colts got on the scoreboard via a Zach Pascal return of a blocked punt. The Chiefs’ much maligned defense kept Andrew Luck and the Colts’ potent offense out of the endzone until late in the fourth quarter. Luck would find T.Y. Hilton on a 29 yard touchdown pass with 5:31 remaining to cut the Colts’ deficit to 24-13. They would get no closer, however, as the Chiefs answered quickly to put the game out of reach at 31-13.

First year Colts’ head coach Frank Reich didn’t mince words when asked to assess his team’s losing effort:

“They outcoached us, they outplayed us. We just gave them too many opportunities.”

The AFC Championship game will find the Patriots in the rare role of a road underdog. Kansas City has been installed as a -3 point home favorite with the total set at 55.5. New England has taken points just once in the past three years and have been very solid on the road going 18-6 SU/16-8 ATS though just 3-5 SU/ATS this year. They’ve been monstrous in playoff games over the past three seasons going 6-1 SU/5-2 ATS in the postseason and 6-0 SU/5-1 ATS in the month of January. We previously mentioned Chiefs’ quarterback Mahomes assurances that the current vintage of Kansas City football won’t suffer a postseason meltdown as has become routine. They better hope that’s the case since the Chiefs’ NFL playoff pointspread performance during their 25 year AFC title game drought is a downright brutal 4-12 SU/4-13 ATS.