Tom Brady on Sunday threw for two touchdowns and ran for another to lead the Tampa Bay Buccaneers over the New Orleans Saints in the NFL playoffs, while defending Super Bowl champions the Kansas City Chiefs withstood Patrick Mahomes suffering a concussion to oust the Cleveland Browns.
Six-time Super Bowl champion Brady and a defensive unit that forced four turnovers sparked the visiting Bucs to a 30-20 victory over the Drew Brees-led Saints, while Mahomes threw for one touchdown and ran for another before exiting in the third quarter of the Chiefs’ 22-17 triumph.
“The defense was the key to the game. It was huge,” Brady said. “Our defense really balled out, got the turnovers we needed.”
Photo: AFP
Both winners advanced to within one game of next month’s Super Bowl in Tampa, the Buccaneers booking a date next Sunday at Green Bay in the National Football Conference Championship game, while the Chiefs are to host the Buffalo Bills in the American Football Conference Championship game.
In his first Bucs season after 20 years in New England, 43-year-old Brady beat 42-year-old Brees in a duel of the all-time NFL passing yardage leaders.
That earned a showdown with star quarterback Aaron Rodgers and the Packers, who lost 38-10 to Tampa Bay in October last year.
“It’s great for our team. We worked hard to get to this point,” Brady said. “We’re going to be playing a great football team. Aaron Rodgers is playing incredible.”
Mahomes, last year’s Super Bowl Most Valuable Player, completed 21 of 30 passes for 255 yards, but suffered a concussion when slammed to the turf by Browns linebacker Mack Wilson.
“When any of our teammates go down, we all step up for one another,” Chiefs receiver Tyrann Mathieu said.
Mahomes must complete NFL concussion protocols before he can return to face the Bills, who lost to the Chiefs 26-17 in October last year.
“He’s actually doing very well. He’s feeling pretty good,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. “He got hit in the back of the head and kind of knocked the wind out of him, and everything else with it. He’s doing great right now ... we’ll see where it goes from here.”
In New Orleans, Brady completed 18 of 33 passes for 199 yards, while Brees, who led New Orleans to a 2010 Super Bowl victory, completed 19 of 34 for 134 yards in what could be his NFL farewell.
“He’s an incredible player,” Brady said.
In Kansas City, Missouri, Baker Mayfield flipped a four-yard touchdown pass to Jarvis Landry to lift Cleveland within 19-10 early in the third quarter.
On Kansas City’s next possession, Mahomes was slammed down by Wilson and knocked out of the game.
“I pray you back next week,” Wilson wrote on Twitter. “Go be great like you have been.”
In reply, Mahommes wrote: “All good brother!”
The Chiefs added a 33-yard Harrison Butker field goal, but Cleveland marched 75 yards on 18 plays in 8:17 and pulled within the final margin on Kareem Hunt’s three-yard touchdown run.
After a Karl Joseph interception ended a Chiefs drive, Kansas City forced a Cleveland punt and the Chiefs ran out the clock, thanks to a 13-yard run by reserve quarterback Chad Henne and his five-yard pass to Tyreek Hill for a fourth-down conversion.
“I’m proud of Chad and the way he handled everything,” Reid said.
“We hurt ourselves in the first half and they capitalized,” Mayfield said. “We gave it our all. It’s just unfortunate to come up short. It sucks.”
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