AFC Divisional Round: KC Chiefs @ NE Patriots, 4:35 pm, Sat, Jan. 16, 2016

[Parliament10]

@ Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Massachusetts





New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs Injury Situations Going Into the Divisional Round Match-Up
By freeland1787 | Jan 11, 2016

http://www.patspulpit.com/2016/1/11/10746620/new-england-patriots-and-kansas-city-chiefs-injury-situations-going

The Patriots are set to play the Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday at 4:35 PM EST at Gillette Stadium. Both teams have suffered a ton of injuries to key players on both sides of the ball. The injury bug really hit the Patriots on the offensive line and the skill players, which took the air out of the offense the final 7 weeks of the season. The Chiefs have injuries to their top 3 pass rushers, which could affect their ability to be able to pressure Tom Brady with just a standard 4-man rush. In addition to getting starters back, getting more depth back should help the Patriots on Special Teams, which went through a 4-week stretch where the whole unit struggled.

On the Patriots injury front, they will get top WR Julian Edelman back from a broken foot. Edelman has been on the shelf for 9 weeks, which means he should be close to full health. The Patriots also did not have Dont'a Hightower, Chandler Jones, and Sebastian Vollmer available for the Dolphins game and all three should be good to go. Having these guys back is critical for the Patriots, who have struggled down the stretch in large part to the injuries piling up and forcing the Patriots to run vanilla game plans.

Not only getting the starters back is helpful, but also the depth guys is important because that allows for the Patriots to rotate their defensive linemen and put their pass catchers in their intended roles when the offense was at full strength through their first eight games. If the Patriots can use the quick passing game to their advantage again, it negates the Chiefs pass rush and blitz calls.

Julian Edelman says he will go 'full throttle' on broken foot
Mike Reiss | ESPN New England Patriots reporter

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14549798/goes-goes

Edelman and Tom Brady spent extra time working together over the team's playoff bye week, and it helps that this is their seventh year together as teammates.

"We do work a lot together, and I know him and he knows me, but we still have to work very hard this week to make up on the ground lost. That's what we're going to try to do," Edelman said, also acknowledging that getting back to game condition is "going to be tough" because there's no duplicate for playing football.

With Edelman's anticipated return, and the expectation that fellow receiver Danny Amendola (left knee) will possibly be used more than he has in recent weeks, it would give the Patriots two trusted receivers to pair with tight end Rob Gronkowski.

[truth18]

I will be cheering like a madman for us, but I think the season ends Saturday.

[Parliament10]

Patriots DE Chandler Jones had 'medical emergency' Sunday
Mike Reiss | ESPN New England Patriots reporter | 01-13-16

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14558353/new-england-patriots-chandler-jones-had-medical-emergency-sunday

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- New England Patriots defensive end Chandler Jones, who led the team with 12.5 sacks during the regular season, was hospitalized Sunday for an undisclosed issue after he reportedly visited the Foxborough Police Department, where dispatch records show he was evaluated by five officers....

In a statement, the Patriots said, "Chandler Jones was admitted to the hospital on Sunday and released that day. He reported to work on time Monday morning and has participated in all meetings and practices since then."


According to police audio, an officer tells a dispatcher: "I got his keys off the kitchen table, I was able to lock the front door. If you want to pass along to the fire, he was definitely involved with Class D delta before this happened, just so they know."

Under Massachusetts law, Class D is a group of drugs including marijuana and phenobarbitol, a prescription drug.

[15th overall]

Julian fixes everything. If he's 70% of what Real Julian is, we'll win this.

[truth18]

Watching with a New England homie so I won't post much but can Geoff/a mod bump this into the Celtics forum before tip off?

[Geoffrey P]

Not sure if they deserve it with how they've been playing like poopoo

[truth18]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPATTTTTTTSSSSSSSSS

[Tenbomber]

Patriots were very smart the way they played defense during the 4th quarter....Armed with a 14 point lead, they let the chiefs run out the clock for them.....using most of the quarter just to get them within a touchdown....When the Patriots covered the onside kick, the game was all but in the bag...

Very crafty... but what else would you expect from them?.....So now its on to Denver most likely unless the injured Big Ben can work some magic with nearly all of his weapons injured.....

[Smitty731]

Word is that Edelman went in to the X-Ray room. Hopefully it was a planned thing to check and make sure his foot was good.

[Curmudgeon]

KC is an excellent team but with a flaw: they couldn't score in a hurry with big plays. They had to dink and dunk.

[Gant]

I'm not a football fan. It's a beautiful spectacle though. I watched part of yesterday's game.


Here's a review:

I find football spectacular on the eyes, but grating on the ears. Almost everything the announcers say sounds deranged. The commercials are even more unhinged and seem to assume that everyone watching is easily persuaded to buy products. Usually fast food, canned beer, or trucks.


Sidenote: I do like truck voices. Almost every truck commercial features a narrator who puts on a phony "truck voice," which is unusually very gravelly and low.

Sometimes they use Sam Elliot though. I like it when they do that, because Sam Elliot has a natural truck voice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Elliott

One time I saw a truck commercial out of Canada. They used a guy putting on a truck voice too.


Back to the game review:

Often when I try to watch football, I fall asleep. But I stayed awake for yesterday's game, and found it very enjoyable. There are lots of colors and lights and computer graphics. I particularly like the imaginary yellow lines they put on the field. I think these are first down lines. There are imaginary blue lines too I think.


The important thing to know about football (when you don't particularly care for the sport and have the sound off) is there's lots of pointing. Everywhere on the field, people point. When the referees call a foul (it's called a penalty in football) they use two fingers. In all other occasions, people use the traditional one finger point.

Before the ball is snapped, when players see something that is surprising, they point very enthusiastically at it. I don't know why. The quarterback points a lot. The defensive guys on the outside point a lot too.

My favorite pointing moments come when someone points up at the sky. The Kansas City kicker did that after he successfully made a field goal yesterday. I think the gesture in this case was some kind of theological statement.

It seems to me that God is probably too busy worrying about people starving and being ill around the world to care about whether the Kansas City kicker whapped a ball between two sticks with his foot, but I could easily be wrong. Anyway, that kicker pointed really well.


I know what you're wondering, with the sound off, how do you hear the truck voices?
Well, anyone who's watched a lifetime of basketball, has that truck voice ingrained in their head and hears it whenever they see a truck commercial whether the sound is on or not.


Final thoughts:

Tom Brady's unusually healthy diet seems very effective. (I read the article about his personal chef in the Boston Globe.)

Some people dress creatively in the stands. One lady, apparently a Chiefs fan, wore a tomahawk hat. Other folks completely paint their faces. Under normal circumstances you would probably not want to make eye contact with these people.

I'm glad the Patriots won, as that allows for the viewing of lots more pointing next week.

End of review.

[Geoffrey P]

I thought it was a decent game overall. Seemed like an unusual amount of drops but hey they won. Denver could go either way but if Denver is going to win it's going to be their defense IMO.