p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> <\/p>\n
DENVER \u2014 Third time\u2019s the charm?<\/p>\n
Twice in club history, the Chargers<\/a> lost playoff games at New England. It was the AFC championship game in the 2007 season and a divisional game in 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s little more than a trivia answer, though, as the two teams are entirely different now. This matchup features two outstanding coaches in Jim Harbaugh<\/a> and New England\u2019s Mike Vrabel, and two elite quarterbacks in Justin Herbert<\/a> and Drake Maye.<\/p>\n The Patriots haven\u2019t seen many elite quarterbacks this season, instead beating a ho-hum collection of passers that includes Cam Ward, Spencer Rattler, Dillon Gabriel and 40-year-old Joe Flacco. New England did beat Kansas City\u2019s Patrick Mahomes, and Buffalo star and reigning NFL MVP Josh Allen, knocking off the Bills in Week 5 before blowing a 21-0 lead to them in Week 15.<\/p>\n Of course, you play who\u2019s on your schedule in the NFL, so you don\u2019t pick the quarterbacks you face. And the Patriots have routinely gotten the job done. It\u2019s just that Herbert could present a significant challenge.<\/p>\n That said, Herbert has yet to win a playoff game in six seasons, and he has been hit more than any quarterback in the league (witness his broken left hand).<\/p>\n The Patriots figure to lean heavily on their solid running attack to play ball-control in the frigid cold and make it three for three against their AFC foes from the opposite corner of the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> DENVER \u2014 Third time\u2019s the charm? Twice in club history, the Chargers lost playoff games at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[63539,11604,11863,423,1544,48,52,51,47,50,49,63538,40684,17322,39416,278,7853,427,315,430,1539],"class_list":["post-120565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-afc-championship-game","tag-bears","tag-bills","tag-game","tag-justin-herbert","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-new-england","tag-packers","tag-patriots","tag-playoff-game","tag-season","tag-seattle","tag-team","tag-time","tag-week","tag-yard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}