While the NFC divisional playoffs provided two surprises, action in the AFC went according to script as the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens will square off in a battle of the top two seeds for a ticket to the Super Bowl.
The New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers added some spice to the NFL postseason with respective wins over the defending Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers and New Orleans Saints, but the Patriots (13-3) and Ravens (12-4) were as reliable as their records.
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady put on a clinic with six touchdown passes to tie an NFL playoff record in a 45-10 win over the Denver Broncos on Saturday.
The next day, the Ravens flexed their defensive muscle in stopping the Houston Texans 20-13 to set up a classic showdown at New England’s Gillette Stadium on Sunday where an offensive powerhouse will meet a ferocious defense.
“There’s no one that’s going to overlook a team like that. It would be impossible to do,” Brady told Boston sports radio station WEEI on Monday. “They present a tonne of challenges in all three phases of the game.”
“You watch them yesterday [Sunday], they’re physical, they’re tough, they can cover. They’ve got some of the best players in the history of the NFL at their position,” he added. “We’ve really got our work cut out for us.”
“We’ll use the week to prepare like we always do and really try to be at our best — hopefully be better than we were this past Saturday night,” Brady said.
Brady will need to come up with something magical if the two-time Super Bowl MVP is to top the numbers her put up against the overmatched Broncos.
While those who witnessed the dissection of the Broncos defense were left in awe at Brady’s brilliance, the Patriots quarterback could only see room for improvement.
“There’s ways that we need to be able to improve,” Brady said. “A couple of turnovers hurt us. But for the most part, it was really a good, solid effort.”
“I feel like you win the game and then immediately you’re thinking about the next game,” he said. “So, there’s not too much you take from the game other than winning and moving on.”
Standing between the Patriots and a fifth trip to the Super Bowl in 11 years is one of the NFL’s most menacing defenses led by 13-time Pro Bowler Ray Lewis, Terrell Suggs and Ed Reed.
Against Houston, the Ravens put enough points on the board in the opening quarter, then watched their defense wrestle the Texans into submission with four turnovers and intercepting rookie quarterback T.J. Yates three times.
Brady, a three-time Super Bowl champion and seven-time Pro Bowler, will present a much more serious challenge for Baltimore, but it is one Lewis says the Ravens are prepared for.
Super Bowl champions in 2001, the Ravens are unbeaten at home this season, but now must make the short trip north to Foxborough, Massachusetts, to face a team they have beaten just once in seven meetings.
That one win, however, was a pounding of the Patriots in the 2009 divisional round.
“Defensively, for us to come out in the second half [against Houston] and pretty much pitch a shutout, that’s our standard of football,” declared Lewis, the Ravens defensive lynchpin. “All we have to do is be the team that we are.”
“You don’t take a game from this week to next week,” Lewis said.” “That’s the 24-hour rule in this business, win, lose or draw. You are going to see a totally different Ravens team next week because we we’re playing a totally different team in the Patriots.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier