With 3 TD catches, Kelce played huge part in comeback
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The first pass attempt to Travis Kelce Sunday hit him in both hands after he’d extended his route far enough to collect a first down.
He dropped the ball.
Would it be that kind of day for the Pro Bowl tight end who led the Chiefs in receptions for the second straight year?
Not at all. Things didn’t remedy themselves quickly, but when they did, Kelce was a big part of one of the biggest triumphs in franchise history.
Down 24-0, the Chiefs rallied for an amazing 51-31 triumph over the Houston Texans in the Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs at Arrowhead Stadium. Never had the Chiefs overcome a bigger deficit.
Seven straight Chiefs possessions ended in touchdowns to define the rally. Patrick Mahomes’ 17-yard pass to running back Damien Williams got things going. The reigning league MVP’s next three touchdown passes went to Kelce, who said the team took a blow but didn’t cower.
“We’ve got full confidence not only in the players but in the game plan,” Kelce said. “You just have to deal with what’s going on in the game, what’s real and what’s not real. What was real was we were hurting ourselves early. With that you rally the troops, lean on the leaders on this team and make plays.
“That’s what we did.”
Many pitched in, but Kelce’s reliability around the goal line was critical to the effort. After falling behind huge, the Chiefs struck quickly with short-field opportunities.
A 58-yard kickoff return by Mecole Hardman, a stop on a fake punt and a forced fumble on a Texans kickoff return all gave the Chiefs possession in plus territory.
When the Chiefs got to the goal line, Ma
homes went to his favorite target. He found Kelce from 5, 6 and 5 yards out for first-half touchdowns.
Nothing magical about the routes. Kelce either came across the field and Mahomes rolled with him for the short strike, or, in the case of the final scoring connection, Kelce set up on the goal line and gave Mahomes the option to pass or run.
Mahomes was close to crossing the line of scrimmage, but replay upheld the touchdown toss.
The three touchdown receptions were the most by Kelce in a game — playoff or regular season. His 10 receptions and 134 receiving yards were personal postseason bests. Kelce now has three 100-yard receiving efforts and five touchdowns in seven playoff games.
“We tried to play some man on him, we tried to double him, mix in some zone,” Texans coach Bill O’Brien said. “It was just a tough night.”
The credit, Kelce said, also belongs to his quarterback. That second-quarter performance by Mahomes — four touchdown passes — matched an NFL postseason record for a quarter. And Mahomes finished with five touchdown passes overall.
“Pat Mahomes man, the best quarterback in the National Football League,” Kelce said.
Ravens’ record season ends in stunning loss
The Ravens’ season started to end early in the second quarter Saturday night, when they lined up from a distance that had defined them. It was fourth-and-1, and the Ravens had Lamar Jackson at quarterback, and, well, that has normally been enough.
There had been no better offense in the NFL this season because there had been no offense better at making the most of its unconventional philosophy. The Ravens would run to set up the pass, to control the clock. They’d go for it on fourth down because chances were that they’d get it. They’d score. That was how the Ravens won 12 straight games. That, and a nearly-as-elite defense, was why they were Super Bowl favorites.
But on this tone-setting and game-turning snap in the AFC divisional round, Jackson went nowhere, an increasingly familiar ending for the Ravens in postseason play. He was stopped short of the sticks, the Ravens’ first fourthand-1 failure in nine attempts this season. The sixth-seeded Titans scored on the next play. A regular season of grit and greatness went bust in a 28-12 playoff loss.
With the loss, the Ravens, who won a franchise-record 14 games in the regular season, became the first top seed to fall in the divisional round since the 2016 Dallas Cowboys;
top seeds were 12-1 overall over the past six seasons. Even after earning consecutive AFC North titles, the Ravens still don’t have a playoff win since 2014.
Jackson, who fell to 0-2 in the playoffs, looked like the NFL’s Most Valuable Player front-runner only in spurts. He finished 31-for59 for 365 yards and a touchdown, but he had a career-high three turnovers (two interceptions, one fumble). He added 18 carries for 116 yards, the lone bright spot in a league-leading rushing attack without a fully healthy Mark Ingram II (six carries for 22 yards) or a much-used Gus Edwards (three carries for 20 yards).
The Titans made the Ravens play the game that the Los Angeles Chargers had in last season’s wildcard game — they had to play from behind. The Ravens trailed 7-0 Saturday night after the first quarter, 14-6 after the second and 28-6 after the third. Jackson’s 59 pass attempts, a career high, were proof of an abandoned running game.
But then, the rush attack that had set a single-season NFL record for rushing yards could not exactly be trusted, not even with a week off to prepare for an average Titans defense. First, there was the failed fourth-and-1 to open the second quarter. Then, in the third quarter, with the chance to extend a potentially game-tying drive, Jackson went backwards on a bizarre quarterback sneak on fourth-and-1.
Derrick Henry (30 carries for 195 yards) rumbled 66 yards to the Ravens’ 6 three plays later, and the Titans scored three plays after that. Tennessee’s offense was not overpowering, but it did enough: 300 yards . And the Titans, unlike the Ravens, avoided costly penalties. Quarterback Ryan Tannehill finished 7-for-14 for 88 yards and two scores, while Henry added a 3-yard score on a third-down pop pass at the goal line, a nice reward for his big run.
After another tough end to another one-of-a-kind season, the Ravens will face tough questions at a micro and macro level. Will the Ravens pay to keep outside linebacker Matthew Judon? Will Pro Bowl guard Marshal Yanda return for another season? Can the front office and coaching staff maximize a receiving corps headlined by its young tight ends?
But the most immediate concerns for the team will be about how a disaster like Saturday night happened at all. The Ravens’ first half was uncharacteristic of a team that had/has typically dominated the game’s opening act. After forcing a punt, the Ravens started to move the ball, crossing midfield in five plays. Then the margins for error started to narrow, maybe smaller than they’ve been since September.
Tight end Mark Andrews, limited in practice all week, couldn’t catch up to a pass that was just a bit high and just a bit ahead of
him. The ball glanced off his fingertips and into the waiting arms of safety Kevin Byard. His interception return and an unnecessary-roughness penalty on Jackson gave the Titans a short field, taking over at the Ravens’ 35.
Seahawks’ season ends with loss to Packers
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Instead of fretting about how close they were to what might have been the greatest comeback in team history — a dropped pass here, a controversial spot of the ball there — Seahawks coach Pete Carroll preferred to think about how far they had come.
And how far, he thinks, they can still go.
“I’m moved by these guys,” Carroll said after a 28-23 loss in an NFC divisional-round playoff to the Green Bay Packers that ended one of the team’s most improbable seasons in its 44-year history.
A time or two, his emotions seemed to catch up to him as he talked about Seattle’s comeback from a 21-3 halftime deficit, and a 28-10 deficit midway through the third quarter that saw Seattle get the ball back with less than five minutes left and a chance to go ahead.
“There was not a guy on that sidelines that we were connected to that thought we weren’t going to win that football game all the way until we didn’t,” Carroll said. “And that is what
this thing has felt like the whole time, the whole year. It’s an amazing chemistry and it’s an amazing group.”
Indeed, Seattle had come back from deficits of 10 points or more three times to win this season in going 11-5 and moving on to the divisional round of the playoffs for the seventh time in Carroll’s 10 seasons as coach.
“I was real disappointed that we put ourselves in a situation where we had to come flying back,” Carroll said.
Indeed, that will be one of the questions of the offseason, why Seattle so often had to show its resiliency.
“Just got to start faster on the road than that,” said veteran linebacker K.J. Wright, who insisted the Packers hadn’t shown Seattle anything it hadn’t seen on film. “You don’t want to play catch up in games like this. It’s always tough.”
But while the Seahawks allowed the Packers to march 60 yards or more for TDs on three of four drives in the first half while Seattle had a lone field goal, Carroll said he felt nothing but faith and belief in the locker room at halftime.
“As crazy as it seems we went in at halftime, these guys were jacked up to go ahead and take on the challenge of coming back.”
That Seattle did, with three drives of 69 yards or longer for touchdowns the first three times they had the ball in the second half to cut the lead to 28-23 with 9:33 remaining.