Patriots vs. Eagles: Unalike but similar for Super Bowl LII

Tom Brady ut­tered these words back in Oc­to­ber: "We're all dis­ap­point­ed." It came af­ter the Pa­tri­ots dropped to 2-2 fol­low­ing a loss to the Pan­thers. Doubts be­gan to seep in — had Brady lost it? Was the dy­nas­ty dead? As it turns out, it was un­neces­sary hy­per­ven­ti­la­tion. They won their next eight games and 11 of the last 12 in the regu­lar sea­son.

The Pa­tri­ots and Steel­ers met Dec. 17 with the winner gaining the edge for the AFC playoff home-field advantage. Run­ning back Dion Lewis scored a go-a­head touch­down with 56 sec­onds left. Ben Roethlisberger was picked off by Dur­on Har­mon in the end zone to seal the out­come. With the 27-24 win, the Pa­tri­ots picked up their ninth straight AFC East title and were on their way to se­cur­ing home-field advantage.

Line­back­er James Harrison was re­leased from the Steel­ers de­spite col­lect­ing 80½ sacks in Pitts­burgh. May­be there wasn't room for him any­more there, but the sage Bill Be­li­chick signed a play­er near­ly as old as Tom Brady and the 39-year-old be­gan to con­tri­bute. In his last 14 games in Pitts­burgh, he played just 40 snaps. In the AFC Championship Game against the Jagu­ars, Harrison played 32 snaps and re­cord­ed three tack­les and a quarterback hit. He can't go all game long, but in spurts, Harrison can make his pres­ence known.

It seems like ages ago now, but re­mem­ber when Pa­tri­ots na­tion pressed the pan­ic but­ton when Jul­ian Edelman went down with a torn ACL? Com­ing off a year in which he caught 98 balls for 1,106 yards — an av­er­age of 11.3 yards per catch — Edelman's in­ju­ry felt omi­nous. In the end, it was not. Brandin Cooks, acquired from New Orleans in a trade, caught 65 pass­es, Danny Amendola caught 61 and tight end Rob Gronkowski led the team with 69 grabs. Gronk was placed in con­cus­sion pro­to­col dur­ing the AFC Championship Game but hopes to re­cov­er in plen­ty of time for Su­per Bowl LII.

Jimmy Garoppolo, the play­er all as­sumed was the heir ap­par­ent to Brady, was sent to the 49ers on Oct. 31. Many are still try­ing to make sense of it, par­tic­u­lar­ly when you con­sider Garoppolo went 5-0 as the start­er in San Francisco. But for all of the dust-up af­ter that, in­clud­ing an ESPN ex­pose, the Pa­tri­ots stayed the course. Pa­tri­ots brass tried to knock down sug­ges­tions that there was dis­har­mo­ny with­in the or­gan­i­za­tion. All seemed bent on mak­ing sure the out­side noise wouldn't prove prob­lem­at­ic, and so far, at least as is evi­dent on the field, it has been busi­ness — and win­ning — as usu­al.

NFC Champion Philadelphia Eagles

The Eagles en­tered the Dec. 4 game at Seattle on a nine-game win­ning streak, av­er­ag­ing 31.9 points per game. But the Eagles failed the big road test, losing 24-10 to a team fighting to stay in the playoff hunt. Carson Wentz was sacked three times, threw an in­ter­cep­tion and lost a fum­ble. For per­haps the first time all season, there was slight skep­ti­cism a­bout the Eagles.

This could have been the be­gin­ning of the end. It wasn't. Wentz threw four touch­down pass­es in the 43-35 win over the Rams but left the game af­ter suf­fer­ing a torn ACL that would end his sea­son. Nick Foles came in and com­pleted six of 10 pass­es. Foles' strike to Nel­son Agholor on third down with 1:45 left helped put the game away, and Brandon Graham's touch­down af­ter re­cov­er­ing the Rams' fum­bled lat­eral capped the big win. The Eagles need­ed to win, re­gard­less of Wentz's sta­tus, and they did.

If the Eagles were con­tend­ers be­fore the trade dead­line, they be­came heav­y NFC favorites af­ter pick­ing up run­ning back Jay Ajayi from the Dol­phins. Sit­ting at 7-1, the Eagles sent a fourth-round draft pick to the Dol­phins for Ajayi. He gained 1,272 yards — an av­er­age of 4.9 yards a car­ry — in 2016. But early this sea­son, run­ning behind Miami's poor of­fen­sive line, he'd fall­en to 3.4 yards a car­ry. In Phil­a­del­phi­a during the regu­lar sea­son, he's gained 5.8 yards per carry and caught 10 pass­es for 91 yards.

The most ob­vi­ous and troub­ling loss was Wentz, but his in­ju­ry wasn't the only set­back. The Eagles lost left tack­le Ja­son Peters (knee) and mid­dle line­back­er Jor­dan Hicks (A­chil­les' tendon) vs. Wash­ing­ton in Oc­to­ber. And punt re­turn­er Darren Sproles suf­fered a bro­ken arm and a torn ACL against the Giants in Sep­tem­ber. Se­cond-year tack­le Halapoulivaati Vaitai stepped in for Peters and per­formed well. Mychal Ken­dricks, the broth­er of Vi­kings line­back­er Eric Ken­dricks, picked up time in Hicks' place. Through it all, the Eagles have con­tinued to roll.

One play­er didn't ac­cept a sal­a­ry all sea­son long. An­oth­er spent time in the league of­fice in New York City through­out parts of the year. Chris Long and Mal­colm Jenkins didn't sac­ri­fice foot­ball in their col­lec­tive and in­di­vid­u­al ef­forts to en­gage in so­cial jus­tice so­lu­tions. How­ever, one per­va­sive argument of­ten sug­gest­ed by team own­ers and coach­es against such in­volve­ment is that the play­ers' ac­tions would be­come a "dis­trac­tion" with­in the lock­er room. So much for that. Long caused the in­ter­cep­tion that start­ed the unraveling of the Vi­kings in the NFC Championship Game. Jenkins was the same on-field dis­rupt­er he has been.

RANA L. CASH