Patriots rout Titans 35-14, move on to AFC Championship Game
January 14, 2018 by admin
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FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — To borrow the words of the late Dennis Green, “They are who we thought they were.”
Did anyone really think the New England Patriots, who thumped the Tennessee Titans 35-14 Saturday night, would take the field in the divisional round of the playoffs and look like anything less than the New England Patriots?
Sure, Tom Brady had just emerged from a less-than-stellar December (completing just 61.3% of his passes while recording six touchdowns, five interceptions and a passer rating of 81.6).
Yep, the Patriots defense had struggled this season against mobile quarterbacks — think Alex Smith, Deshaun Watson and Cam Newton — and that provided a degree of hope for the Titans and their dual-threat signal-caller Marcus Mariota.
And yes, there had been whispers about friction between owner Robert Kraft, coach Bill Belichick, and Brady. Such speculation, fueled by an explosive ESPN story, raised the question about the immediate and long-term stability of the union.
But keep it real. These are still the Patriots.
Belichick remains one of the best game-planners, and he always gets his players to buy in. Meanwhile, Brady remains an effective future Hall of Famer, recording his 13th career 300-yard-postseason game.
Brady was as surgical as ever, throwing dart after dart, unaffected by mayhem around the pocket. He even made a few you-gotta-be-kidding-me throws that make it worth wondering if the TB12 Method and practices have indeed made him ageless.
And, regardless of the whispers suggesting cracks in the foundation, New England still boasts one of the strongest top-to-bottom rosters, and those 53 players and their coaches share the common goal of winning yet another Super Bowl.
And that’s why the Patriots dispatched the Titans with apparent ease to punch a ticket to their seventh straight AFC Championship Game, where they will host the winner of the Pittsburgh-Jacksonville game on Jan. 21.
“It’s just a lot of good coaching, a lot of good football players, and we recognize we have a great chance here, and we want to maximize our opportunity,” said New England wide receiver Danny Amendola, who had 11 catches for 112 yards.
“We know we’ve got a good team, and as long as we play well, we can go as far as we want.”
The Titans simply found themselves overmatched on virtually every front.
The quarterback position best illustrated the discrepancies between these two teams. Mariota, making only the second playoff start of his career, facing off with Brady, who entered the game boasting an NFL record 25 postseason victories.
Mariota had virtually willed the Titans to victory in the wild-card round, throwing a pair of touchdown passes (one to himself), scrambling to both extend plays and pick up chunks of yards and even throwing a key block while directing a 22-21 comeback over the Kansas City Chiefs.
Mariota’s strong play briefly carried into Saturday night’s game as he closed out the first quarter with a touchdown drive that featured the same well-rounded effectiveness.
But it’s one thing to exchange blows with Smith and the Chiefs. Keeping pace with Brady and Co., while fending off an aggressive New England defense, represents a much greater challenge.
After Tennessee’s first-quarter touchdown, the Patriots responded with a scoring drive of their own, and then added another, and then a third, a fourth and a fifth.
What made the offensive display so impressive was the fact that the Patriots moved the ball at will against one of the best minds in the game in Tennessee defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau. The 80-year-old found himself pitted against familiar foes in Brady and Belichick for the ninth time in his career. But the familiarity did little good as LeBeau again struggled to find an answer for Brady.
The quarterback entered the game owning a 6-2 record against LeBeau, including a 2-0 playoff mark. In those eight games against LeBeau’s units prior to Saturday, Brady had recorded 19 touchdowns and just three interceptions while completing 68% of his passes for 2,496 yards and a passer rating of 110.9.
Add another 337 yards and three touchdowns to those tallies.
“They were out there making plays, more plays than we did. On those third downs, we couldn’t get of the field,” said Tennessee cornerback Adoree’ Jackson.
Meanwhile, as Brady spread the ball around and racked up yards and touchdowns, the Patriots’ defense essentially shut the Titans down, yielding only six second-half first downs while sacking Mariota seven times after halftime.
Anti-Patriots factions spent Saturday night crowing over calls against the Titans that appeared questionable and helped extend New England drives. An offensive pass interference call, a Tennessee neutral zone infraction and unnecessary roughness calls ranked among the head-scratchers.
But truthfully, the Patriots didn’t need any help from the officials.
Nothing was going to deter New England Saturday. And if the defending champs continue to roll like this next week in the AFC Championship Game, it’s hard to envision anything preventing the Patriots from achieving their ultimate goal, again.
“The reality of the NFL is what we did this week will have nothing to do with what we happens next week,” Brady said. “We’re going to have to repeat it, so you’ve got to get right back to work.
“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.”
***
Follow Mike Jones on Twitter @ByMikeJones
PHOTOS: NFL divisional round playoff action
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New details in police chase of Greyhound bus with 40 people on board
January 14, 2018 by admin
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WADSWORTH, Ill. — Reports of a man armed with a gun and threatening to kill fellow passengers on a Greyhound bus led to a police chase of the vehicle that started in Wisconsin and ended in northern Illinois. A 33-year-old man previously deported from the United States faces felony charges, CBS Chicago reports.
None of the 40 people aboard the bus bound for Chicago from Milwaukee on Friday night was injured and the suspect was taken into custody after authorities, using spike strips to flatten the tires of the bus, forced the vehicle to stop on Interstate 94 near the Illinois community of Wadsworth. Authorities said they began chasing the bus after getting a call from someone who was on board.
Margarito Vargas-Rosas, who most recently resided in Chicago, is the suspect who told passengers he had a gun and would kill people, Racine County, Wisconsin Sheriff Christopher Schmaling told reporters Saturday. Vargas-Rosas is being held at the Lake County (Ill.) jail.
Margarito Vargas-Rosas is in custody after allegedly threatening to kill fellow passengers on a Greyhound bus pursuit and leading police on a chase.
Police chased the bus overnight after passengers called 911. The bus came to a stop after its tires were deflated in Lake County, Illinois at I-94 and Route 173.
Vargas-Rosas was taken into custody. He works at a restaurant in Milwaukee and was returning to Chicago, Schmaling said, when he apparently got into an argument with other passengers. The suspect is an illegal immigrant who had been deported to Mexico in 2012, the sheriff said.
The Sheriff’s Office is recommending Vargas-Rosas be charged with making terroristic threats, a felony, and disorderly conduct.
The suspect was saying “he was gonna kill us, that he was going to put a bullet in our head,” passenger Patrick Todd told CBS 2 in Chicago after the nearly 40 passengers arrived at Union Station on another vehicle.
Police gave chase over the border into Illinois because the bus driver did not stop, suggesting it may have been a hijacking. Schmaling said the driver didn’t know there was any potential danger.
Police put out spike strips to make the Greyhound bus stop. No firearm was recovered.
“Before I know it, there’s like 20 police cars in front of us and on the side of the road,” passenger Chris Walker says.
The suspect also made threats of violence against the arresting officers as well as the investigators at the police station, Schmaling said.
One passenger, Patrick Dodd, told the Chicago Tribune that the incident began when the man who said he had a gun started to threaten passengers riding in the back of the bus. Dodd said the man pulled something out of his pants that Dodd believed may have been a weapon.
Terrance Williams of New Jersey was in the middle of the bus and initially thought police were escorting the bus, not realizing what was happening in the back. But he too was confused about why it took so long for the driver to stop.
“The law is you see emergency lights you pull over,” Williams said. “(The police) were in front of us, they were in back of us.”
Sheriff Schmaling said the bus driver told authorities that he didn’t stop the bus because he thought the squad cars were following another vehicle.