FOXBOROUGH – After Sunday night’s victory against the Chargers, the No. 2-seeded Patriots are one of five AFC teams left standing.
But the way this season has unfolded, with New England going from worst-to-first in the AFC East and winning 14 regular-season games before advancing to the divisional round of the playoffs, was nearly impossible to predict.
This was a team that won four games a year ago. Six wins would have been an improvement. Eight wins would have been twice as good. Not long ago, a 10-win prediction seemed like it would have been pushing it.