Tom Brady And Patrick Mahomes Had Dueling Late Drives To Send The AFC Championship To Overtime

The Patriots waltzed into Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday night and thoroughly dominated the first half against the Chiefs in the AFC Championship game, taking a 14-0 lead to the half.

However, after a dismal half, Patrick Mahomes came alive to bring the Chiefs back into the game and, with two minutes to go, Kansas City was able to punch in a touchdown run to take a 28-24 lead.

The problem for Kansas City was they gave Tom Brady a full two minutes and all three of his timeouts to march down the field and tear the hearts out of Chiefs fans everywhere.

A solid return from Cordarrelle Patterson set them up across their own 30 and after one pass from Brady to Julian Edelman they were across midfield. A Chris Hogan first down catch was overturned, though, and the Patriots faced a 3rd-and-10. Brady checked down to Gronkowski who had the ball go straight through his fingertips and fall into a Chiefs defender’s lap for the game-sealing interception — except there was a flag on the field and Dee Ford had been lined up in the neutral zone negating the play.

As everyone expected at that point, the Patriots capitalized on a perfect pass from Brady to Gronk down the sidelines to set up a Rex Burkhead touchdown run with 39 seconds to play.

The Chiefs returned the ball out to the 31 and gave Mahomes 32 seconds and one timeout to try and create some magic. After finding Spencer Ware on a scramble drill down the sideline to get across midfield, the Chiefs burned their last timeout, but Mahomes was able to push them into field goal range and stop the clock after drawing the Pats offsides and delivering a perfect pass over the middle.

Their one shot to the end zone fell harmlessly to the turf and they trotted Harrison Butker out for a 39-yard field goal attempt to tie the game at 31. Butker drilled the kick with eight seconds left and send the game to overtime, making it the first time both conference championship games went to overtime.

In overtime, it was the Brady show once again as the Patriots won the toss and marched down the field for a touchdown, never letting Mahomes and the Chiefs touch the football thanks to multiple conversions on third and long.