All logic favors the Saints and Chiefs advancing to the Super Bowl. The NFC and AFC championship games Sunday are both rematches from the regular season that the home teams should win, one indoor at the climate-controlled Super Dome in New Orleans and the other in the Arctic blast of zero-degree windchill outside at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.
The Los Angeles Rams have already lost to the Saints in New Orleans, 45-35, in a game the home team led 35-17 at halftime. It was a quarterback battle between grizzled veteran Drew Brees and up-and-comer Jared Goff, whose numbers were almost equal that early November day.
Since then, when the Saints moved to 7-1 on the way to an 11-1 start, New Orleans hasn’t been quite as dominating but clinched the NFC South before the last game, a ho-hum loss to the Panthers that Brees sat out. And in the divisional playoff round, the Saints trailed the Eagles 14-0 before rallying for the 20-14 win.
The Rams went 5-2 over their last six games to capture the No. 2 seed in the NFC and were even less-potent down the stretch of the regular season, and their 30-22 win over the Cowboys in the first game of the playoffs was hardly a blowout.
In the AFC, the top-seeded Chiefs and Patriots played a Sunday night 43-40 thriller on October 15 in New England, won by the home team on a field goal as time expired. Tom Brady is even older than Brees and Patrick Mahomes younger than Goff in this other battle of generational QBs. The freezing weather should not be a factor for either team, since both have to try to play in it.
The last time Brady played in KC, he was benched in the fourth quarter of a rout by the Chiefs that was supposed to be the beginning of the end for Tom Terrific. But, since then, he has reached three Super Bowls, winning two of them. And in an ironic twist of strategies, the Patriots will try to hold the ball on sustained drives to keep the athletic Mahomes off the frozen tundra.
Will it be the two youngsters advancing to the Super Bowl in Atlanta or the two golden oldies? I say one of each, but maybe not the ones you, and the oddsmakers, like.
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