Patriots offensive line keeps Brady clean vs. Chiefs

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FOXBORO -- It had been a while since Tom Brady left a game barely touched.

He was battered against both the Jets and the Dolphins in each of the final two Patriots games of the season, and in the latter, he suffered a sprained ankle on his first true drop-back of the game when Miami defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh landed on the back of his right leg.

But during Saturday's Divisional Round -- a 27-20 Patriots victory -- Brady was kept relatively clean.

The Patriots offensive line didn't allow a single sack, and Brady was hit just twice: once by linebacker Dee Ford, and another time late by linebacker Dezman Moses, which resulted in an unnecessary roughness penalty.

"Every time you keep Tom clean-ish, that's what you want," said Patriots left tackle Sebastian Vollmer. "We'll find out tomorrow watching film what we gotta do better and stuff. But I would say it was good for today. Probably won't be good enough next week so gotta get better."

Brady's blockers knew they would be tested in a variety of ways going into their matchup with the Chiefs. They were without rookie right guard Tre' Jackson (knee), who started each of the last five games of the regular season, and Vollmer was coming off of an ankle injury that forced him to miss their Week 17 loss to the Dolphins.

Simply having Vollmer on the field, though, gave the Patriots a lift.

"His presence on the field is comforting," Patriots tight end Michael Williams said. "It's just knowing that you have that rock at left tackle doing what Sebass does. He's just a great player . . .

"You know what you're going to get from him down in and down out. You know exactly what you're going to get. That's confidence. You're going to have that person there on the end ready to protect Tom and do it in the run game also. He gets his guys out and just does his job."

On the interior, Josh Kline played every snap at left guard, while rookie Shaq Mason played at right guard.

For Mason, who usually fills in at left guard in a rotation with Kline (who plays both guard spots) and Jackson (who plays on the right side), it was a new kind of test. After going up against a talented Chiefs defensive line, his teammates thought he passed with flying colors.

"He's a battler," said Kline. "He's very athletic, and he's a good kid. He works hard and tries to take direction from [offensive line coach Dave DeGuglielmo], and tries to take coaching from us. He played well tonight."

"I don't think it's an easy place to play," Vollmer said. "[We're] blocking for one of the best so there's a lot of responsibility. [Mason] came in, been a professional . . . playing left and right [guard], and it's a testament to him."

The Patriots line had help in a few different forms during their near-sterling night, when they were asked to pass protect for the vast majority of the game. (Brady attempted 42 passes, and the Patriots ran just 14 times.)

First, their offensive skill-position teammates got an upgrade with the return of receiver Julian Edelman, who missed the final seven regular-season games with a Jones fracture but caught 10 passes for 100 yards in his return.

With Brady able to get the ball out quickly to Edelman, receiver Danny Amendola, running back James White and tight end Rob Gronkowski, it made the job of Brady's personal protectors that much easier.

"Any time you get the ball out quick, the people up front like it," Williams said. "It just brings another element to the way you pass set and the way you do things. It just lets you know that you don't have to hold a block for five seconds every time, and it's very helpful."

The Patriots were also aided by the fact that Kansas City's top pass-rushers were banged up. Outside linebacker Justin Houston played very sparingly and didn't show up on the stat sheet. Tamba Hali, who helped dismantle the Patriots offense last season in a Week 4 drubbing of the Patriots, recorded just one tackle.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick explained after the game that once the Patriots handled a few Chiefs pressures on their first drive of the game, the job of the offensive line was somewhat simplified. They saw more four-man and easily-identifiable five-man rushes.

All of which they handled, which earned them kudos.

"I think the offensive line did a great job," Belichick said. "The receivers did an excellent job of getting open and getting separation. Tom got the ball out quickly, so all that worked together.

"In that first drive, they came after us at least three times, maybe four, and we made plays on all those. We had a third-down conversion, hit James White out in the flat for an easy 20 yards. Amendola -- that was another probably easy 20 yards or something like that, whatever it was. They came after us and we hit them pretty good on those, and then that really slowed it down for a while.

"We didn’t see a lot of pressures. It was a lot of four-man rush, other than when they were in some of their five-down looks, but those were relatively easy to identify. So we didn’t see after that first drive a whole lot of pressure.

"I thought again those are good pass-rushers on the edge there – Hali and Ford, Houston when he played -- [and] big guys inside, so I thought we held up to them pretty good. A big part of that also was the quarterback and receivers being able to get the ball out on time and make some yards after the catch, which Rob did, James White did, Danny, Julian.

"It was a good team effort in the passing game. The offensive line had a big challenge. I don’t know how many times they threw the ball but it was most all of them, I know that. They pass blocked well."

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