The Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots are playing in the divisional round of the playoffs on Saturday night and the postseason matchup has two top quarterbacks facing off in Tom Brady and Andrew Luck and the playoff game will be at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough and starts up at 8:15 pm ET and will be airing on CBS and streaming online from the NFL.com main website.
The Patriots got a bye in the first round after coming in as the second seed in the AFC behind the Denver Broncos and this came after the team lost their top five receivers from last season and now they will face off against a team with tons of momentum in the Colts. Indianapolis made a comeback last weekend against the Kansas City Chiefs that saw the team erase a 28-point deficit and now they are hitting the road to play the Patriots after Luck threw for four touchdowns and over 400 yards, while TY Hilton connected on the winning score and had over 200 receiving yards and those will be the two main players for the Patriots defense to focus on and they will be without Brandon Spikes, as the Pats placed him on IR after dealing with a knee injury and showing up late for practice.
The Patriots come into the game ranked ninth in the league in rushing yards per game and 10th in passing yards and they will need to play a very solid offensive game to win on Saturday and they will likely be setting up a matchup with Peyton Manning in the next round if they can get through the Colts. The Patriots finished the regular season with a win against the Buffalo Bills on Sunday December 29 and after a couple weeks off they will get the chance to match up with another division champion in the Colts and this is a matchup of the four and two seeds in the conference.
Check here for the Colts and Patriots live coverage.
Tom Brady has been in games like this before and he is expected to lead his team to victory and after losing in the championship game to the Ravens last season, New England will be looking to get back to the round and they will have to get through Luck to do it. If the Colts win, it would be an amazing turnaround from just a couple years ago when they had the number one overall pick and now they have the chance to try and win their second playoff game and they have made it to the postseason in each of Luck's first two seasons.
The Colts have the distinction of saying they defeated the Seattle Seahawks, San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos this season and if they can somehow beat the Pats, the team will get the chance to possibly face Peyton Manning again if his team can beat the Chargers. The Colts started the season 4-1 before losing to the Chargers and they come into the playoffs ranking 17th in passing yards per game and the defense with Robert Mathis will have to play very well to hold back Brady and company. The team won a crazy game against the Chiefs last week and now they will face off against one of the toughest playoffs quarterbacks of all time in Brady and having to travel and play in the cold will be tough to overcomes as well.