Foles. Brady. This Super Bowl will bring the heat in Minnesota.
In Sunday’s Conference Championship games, New England completed a comeback for the ages and Philadelphia never looked back in an absolutely dominant performance on their home turf against the two-seed Vikings.
At 3:05 in Foxboro, the Patriots received the first kickoff of the AFCC game from the Jacksonville Jaguars. Here it was; the number-one offense taking on the number-one defense in the AFC. The Pat’s got on top early, earning a field goal by the foot of Steven Gostkowski to put them up by three.
Without dismay, the Jags struck back with two unanswered touchdowns. Blake Bortles defied much talk of the “lucky season,” and really came through for Jacksonville, completing pass after pass, with 23 completions, 293 yards and a passing TD to Mercedes Lewis. Jacksonville had the game going into the fourth quarter, leading by a touchdown with no sign of kindling in the dwindling New England fire, especially with the big burner of Rob Gronkowski out due to concussion protocol.
However, the brilliance of Belichick and Brady put hope in the burning coals of the New England offense. The Patriots scored two touchdowns in the fourth after being shut out by the Jaguar defense in the third to put them up by four. The man to thank is Danny Amendola who came down with two receptions in the end zone, and passing a total of 20 yards.
New England came out on top, 24-20.
Later Sunday night at 6:45 in Philadelphia, the Vikings were set to take on the Eagles. They jumped out early, taking sudden control of the game after a perfect drive topped off by a 25-yard touchdown pass to Kyle Rudolph who put Minnesota on top, 7-0.
With much frustration coming from both the sidelines and the bleachers, the Eagles’ defense must have been fueled up and finally ready to play the way their 13-3 record showed. They completely shut down Case Keenum and the Vikings’ offense for the remainder of the game.
Now it was up to Nick Foles to determine the fate of the City of Brotherly Love. After all, it’s impossible to win a game without scoring. Fortunately, the veteran quarterback gave Philly fans nothing to worry about as he went on to throw for 352 yards with 26 completions and three TD passes. He led the team to a 38-7 home victory and earned a spot to play against New England in Minnesota.
The Eagles established a truly dominate postseason run, despite being the the biggest underdogs since the 2009 Arizona Cardinals who came up short against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they aren’t done yet.
Super Bowl LII will be played at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, MN on Sunday, February 4th, at 6:30 PM.
This year’s championship round has potential to a be a high-scoring game as two elite offenses go head-to-head, so it should definitely be worth a tune-in. And if not for the heavyweight offensive clashing, at least try to be *NSYNC with halftime for Justin Timberlake’s third Super Bowl performance.
