{"id":507024,"date":"2026-01-18T21:29:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T01:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=507024"},"modified":"2026-01-18T21:29:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T01:29:04","slug":"maye-throws-3-touchdowns-to-lead-patriots-to-afc-title-match","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/maye-throws-3-touchdowns-to-lead-patriots-to-afc-title-match\/","title":{"rendered":"Maye throws 3 touchdowns to lead Patriots to AFC title match"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Drake Maye threw 3 TD passes, \u00a0Marcus Jones returned one of C.J. Stroud&#8217;s 4 picks for a score, and the New England Patriots beat the Houston Texans 28-16 to reach the AFC Championship Game for the 1<sup>st<\/sup> time in 7 years.<\/p>\n<p>In Mike Vrabel&#8217;s 1<sup>st<\/sup> campaign as boss, New England ill make their 16th conference championship match appearance and 1<sup>st<\/sup> since their run to their 6<sup>th<\/sup> Super Bowl title under Bill Belichick in the 2018 campaign. The Patriots have triumphed in their last 9 divisional round matches.<\/p>\n<p>New England\u2019s quarterback finished 16-of-27 for 179 yards but had an interception and fumbled 4 times as 1 of his fumbles set up the Texans\u2019 1<sup>st<\/sup> TD.<\/p>\n<p>Carlton Davis III had 2 interceptions for the Patriots.<\/p>\n<p>The 8 combined turnovers &#8212; Woody Marks also lost a fumble for the Texans \u2013 were the most in a postseason match since 2015 when Arizona and Carolina combined for 8<sup>th<\/sup> in the NFC Championship Match.<\/p>\n<p>Houston has lost in the divisional round in 3 consecutive campaigns under boss DeMeco Ryans. The organization is now 0-7 all-time in this round.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">THE TORCH HAS BEEN PASSED \ud83d\udd25 <\/p>\n<p>Drake Maye leads the Patriots to the AFC Championship for the first time since Tom Brady \ud83d\udcaa <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/blR0LCwHeU\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/blR0LCwHeU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; ESPN (@espn) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/espn\/status\/2013028237496955147?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">January 18, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Drake Maye threw 3 TD passes, \u00a0Marcus Jones returned one of C.J. Stroud&#8217;s 4 picks for a score, and the New England Patriots [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4225,"featured_media":507025,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[26989,17487],"news_category":[16703,16715],"gn_keywords":[26990,18130],"acf":{"news_source":"","link_picture":"","announce":"New England reached the AFC title game after defeating Houston.","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/507024"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/507024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507026,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/507024\/revisions\/507026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507024"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=507024"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=507024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}