KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) The dominant storyline all week had been how the AFC championship game represented a passing of the torch, from Tom Brady to Patrick Mahomes and the New England Patriots to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Must have lit a fire under the Pats.
The team that has been there, done that and done it again and again survived a back-and-forth fourth quarter to beat the Chiefs 37-31 in overtime Sunday night. Brady hit trusty targets Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski to convert a trio of third-and-10s against one of the NFLs worst defenses, and Rex Burkhead plunged in from 2 yards out to send the Patriots to their third straight Super Bowl.
Mahomes and the leagues highest-scoring offense never got a shot with the ball in overtime.
The Patriots will face the Los Angeles Rams, who survived their own overtime thriller earlier in the day against the New Orleans Saints, for the Lombardi Trophy in Atlanta.
And the Chiefs will head into the offseason ruing another postseason disappointment.
It hurts. It hurts everybody, Mahomes said. We had an opportunity this year, this season, and we put in the work. But this game could be a building block.
Right now, its the end, he said, but hopefully its the beginning of a long time.
The Chiefs had never before hosted an AFC championship game. In fact, the last time they hoisted the trophy that now bears the name of their founder, the late Lamar Hunt, it was Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson who then led them to a victory over the Minnesota Vikings in the fourth Super Bowl.
But with their new star quarterback leading one of the leagues flashiest offenses, this was supposed to be the year Kansas City finally ended its 49-year drought. It was supposed to be the year coach Andy Reid finally exorcised his postseason demons and made it back to the Super Bowl.
Instead of a year of change, it was a year of the same.
The way we fought, cant ask for more out of the guys. Just kind of at a loss for words, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce said. Its a hell of a run. It hurts to see it end this way.
The beginning of the end came when Patriots coach Bill Belichick dialed up a defense that held the Chiefs to 32 yards total offense in the first half, sacked Mahomes three times and kept Kansas City off the scoreboard for the first time in any half all season.
Then, it was Brady and their offense that couldnt be stopped in the second half and overtime.
The Patriots needed all the points they could muster, too.
