The New England Patriots won the opening coin toss and elected to defer to bring out Jarrett Stidham and the Denver Broncos to start the AFC Championship Game.<\/p>\n
Denver opened with an inside handoffs to RJ Harvey for a short gains on both both first and second down. On third and long, Stidham then was chased out of the pocket and nearly stripped-sacked. He was able to get the ball out for a quick three-and-out.<\/p>\n
The Patriots too came out with two inside handoffs, but were able to get six yards out of it. On third and four, Drake Maye had a very dangerous pass nearly intercepted by Talanoa Hufanga but the result was a matching three-and-out and a punt for the visiting team.<\/p>\n
With a bit of a field position switch advantage, the Broncos began their second drive from their own 41-yard line.<\/p>\n
Stidham opened up with an escape from the pocket and threw it away on a long pass to RJ Harvey. Another incompletion on a poorly thrown ball to Marvin Mims Jr. on what could have been a huge gain on a screen. He followed that up with a go ball right back to Mims for a 52-yard bomb to set up a first and goal at the Patriots seven yard line.<\/p>\n
Two plays later, Stidham hit Courtland Sutton for a touchdown to put Denver up by seven in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
The Patriots narrowly avoided another three-and-out on their next drive, barely getting the first down. However, on the very next play Ja\u2019Quan McMillian blew up a screen pass on Stefon Diggs for a two yard loss. Pat Surtain II then followed it up with a perfectly played pass breakup to force a third and long. Maye was nearly sacked, but got a short pass to Diggs who was immediately tackled by Devon Key to force a punt.<\/p>\n
Denver would take over at their own 23-yard line. RJ Harvey was nearly met in the backfield on the carry, but he jump cut his way to a nine yard gain. Stidham would find Pat Bryant open at the sticks on the next play to secure the first down. Stidham then had a QB keeper with plenty of green grass and a quick eight yard gain. Harvey would plow forward from there to get the first near midfield.<\/p>\n
The drive would stall from there after a Stidham pass to Courtland Sutton was a bit behind him. Sutton could have caught it, but it wasn\u2019t the greatest pass either.<\/p>\n
Que Robinson picked up a huge sack on the Patriots next drive and they would be punting on a fourth and 15 to get the ball right back to Denver with great field position as the first quarter came to an end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New England Patriots won the opening coin toss and elected to defer to bring out Jarrett Stidham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[83996,7,6,84],"class_list":["post-704862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl-playoffs","tag-denver-broncos-playoffs","tag-football","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-playoffs"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115957999037286802","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}