{"id":241726,"date":"2026-01-12T23:47:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T23:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/241726\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T23:47:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T23:47:06","slug":"patriots-stifle-chargers-to-win-their-first-playoff-game-in-seven-years-nfl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/241726\/","title":{"rendered":"Patriots stifle Chargers to win their first playoff game in seven years | NFL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Drake Maye threw a touchdown pass to Hunter Henry in the fourth quarter, and New England\u2019s defense roughed up Justin Herbert as the Patriots beat the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/los-angeles-chargers\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Los Angeles Chargers<\/a> 16-3 in their AFC wildcard playoff game on Sunday night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Andy Borregales kicked three field goals for the Patriots, who won a playoff game for the first time since their Super Bowl victory in the 2018 season. In the divisional round, they\u2019ll host the winner of Monday night\u2019s game between Pittsburgh and Houston.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">In his first career playoff game, Maye completed 17 of 29 passes for 268 yards and ran for a team-high 66 yards. He also threw an interception and lost a fumble, but the Chargers couldn\u2019t capitalize on those turnovers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">New England held the Chargers to 207 yards of offense and sacked Herbert six times, with one of those resulting in a lost fumble that set up the Patriots\u2019 TD.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">This is the second straight season the Chargers have lost in the wildcard round. Herbert finished 19 of 31 for 159 yards and was his team\u2019s leading rusher with 57 yards as he fell to 0-3 in the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drake Maye threw a touchdown pass to Hunter Henry in the fourth quarter, and New England\u2019s defense roughed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-241726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}