NFL Championship Weekend Star Performers
The final four and Super Bowl glory beckoning for just two of the remaining teams. We were treated to two matchups which, on paper, looked about as good as it could get. The No1 and No2 seeds in the NFC and the rematch of the AFC Championship game from a year ago. However, as we all know, the game isn’t played on paper.
Here is this week‘s star performers:
Patrick Mahomes
QB, Kansas City Chiefs, W 23-20 vs Bengals
So, it’s a fact, Patrick Mahomes is an alien. The man can do on one leg what an entire league can barely do on two. Easily the best quarterback on Sunday, against a relentless Bengals secondary he was clinical and especially considering he was throwing to whoever was left standing after more of his receivers went down injured.
He totalled ten different receivers with a big night for Marquez Valdez-Scantling topping the team on 116 yards. It looked like he was sore by the end of things and hopefully the two week break will be enough to make sure he enters Super Bowl weekend as healthy as possible.
Chris Jones
DT, Kansas City Chiefs, W 23-20 vs Bengals
Chris Jones has been on the highlight reel all year but he absolutely annihilated a weakened Bengals O-Line. Grabbing a pair of sacks and a bunch of QB hits and pressures, he and Frank Clark were the difference makers in the trenches of the AFC match-up.
The stoppage of the Bengals during their final drive was his icing on the cake. In the man’s own words: Don’t ever, ever, EVER disrespect Arrowhead Stadium – I feel like he really meant that.
Haason Reddick
LB, Philadelphia Eagles, W 31-7 vs 49ers
Who matches a Pro-Bowl, a second team All-Pro no less, Outside Linebacker up against a third string Tight End… twice? Kyle Shanahan, apparently – and good Lord, did Haason Reddick make him pay.
Reddick was destructive in the first drive of the NFC match-up, so destructive that he broke Brock Purdy and ruined the whole game for the rest of us.
I’m not saying that the end result would have been different if Purdy was in the game but it certainly wouldn’t have been the landslide victory it ended up being. It’s a shame for a match that promised so much but you can’t blame it on a man for playing absolutely lights out.
A week to forget for… Brock Purdy
I truly hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the young starlet. He didn’t get his chance on Sunday night but I just hope that the elbow injury isn’t serious and he gets at least a swing at the big chair in San Francisco next season. Good luck, my man!