AFC Championship Halftime Report: Titans vs. Chiefs

Derrick Henry vs. Reggie Ragland. What a fan game this has been to watch. 

When the season started, few thought the Tennessee Titans would be playing for an AFC Championship, something they haven’t done since 2003. But with Ryan Tannehill replacing Marcus Mariota in at QB, and the domination of Derrick Henry, this Titans team has not only knocked off the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens to get to this point, but they’re on a mission to win it all. Although they are currently trailing the Chiefs in the AFC title game, 21-17, there’s still more game to play.

Derrick Henry vs. Reggie Ragland. What a fun game this has been to watch so far.

For the Titans, Derrick Henry has 16 carries for 62 yards, and 1 TD. Ryan Tannehill is 11-17 for 120 yards and 1 TD.

For the Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes has completed 14 of 20 passes for 172 yards, 2 passing TDs, and 1 rushing TD. Reggie Ragland, has one big tackle on the day, and it just so happens to be against his friend, Derrick Henry.

All in all, the first half of the AFC Championship has not been a let down. The Titans blew a 17-7 lead and let the Chiefs take the lead before the half ended. Can Henry and the Titans once again do the unthinkable and get a huge road victory in Kansas City and advance to the Super Bowl, or will Reggie Ragland and the Chiefs tackle the Titans dreams from coming true?

We will soon find out….

Roll Tide Wire will have an AFC Championship post game report! Stay tuned!

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NFL fans roasted the Chiefs for their costly first-half penalties vs. Titans

Considering how the AFC championship ended last year, you’d think the Chiefs would have cleaned this up.

A costly encroachment penalty in the AFC Championship Game? You’d think the Kansas City Chiefs would have learned their lesson last year.

During the second quarter of the Chiefs’ matchup against the Tennessee Titans at Arrowhead Stadium during the AFC title game, Kansas City committed a handful of costly penalties on the Titans’ preposterously long touchdown drive: 15 plays, 9:07 minutes and 75 yards. It wouldn’t have been possible without Chiefs’ defenders committing a handful of bone-headed errors.

On a third-and-7, defensive end Frank Clark committed an encroachment penalty, which made life easier for Ryan Tannehill, who then hit receiver Adam Humphries on the ensuing play. On a third-and-22 — a third-and-22! — cornerback Bashaud Breeland committed a defensive pass interference that gave the Titans a first down. They ground away the Chiefs on the following five plays, finally scoring a touchdown on a trick play, a play-action pass to tackle Dennis Kelly.

Because the Chiefs’ mistakes were so glaring, NFL fans and media members were deeply critical of Kansas City. Considering an encroachment penalty was essentially what held the Chiefs out of the Super Bowl last year, the criticism felt justified.

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Former Eagles OL Dennis Kelly scores a Big-Man TD for Titans in AFC Championship game vs. Chiefs

Dennis Kelly hauls in a TD catch from Ryan Tannehill in AFC title game

One of Howie Roseman and Chip Kelly’s previous trades is now trending on social media thanks to the Tennessee Titans getting creative on offense.

Back in 2016, the Eagles traded a talented young offensive lineman, Dennis Kelly, to the Tennessee Titans, for former All-American wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham.

The trade at the time was viewed as a win for the Eagles, but Kelly has gone to flourish as a versatile lineman for the Titans, while Green-Beckham was out of the league shortly after the trade.

On Sunday, Kelly shined bright once again, securing this big-man touchdown catch from Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill.

During his time with the Eagles logged 453 snaps in 2015, the sixth-highest total of any Eagles lineman, but only started just two of the 15 games he played in Philadelphia during his final season with the Birds.

Check it out: Take a virtual tour of SoFi Stadium from every section

Time to get a glimpse from your soon-to-be seats in the Los Angeles Chargers new stadium.

The Los Angeles Chargers are set to embark on a new journey as they move into their new stadium, which will be shared with the Rams in nearly eight months from now.

Many fans have already started buying their tickets, so they know exactly where they will be sitting. Now, they can get a feel of what that’s going to look like from their seats.

For those that already have seats locked in, or are curious to get a glimpse at seats to get in the near future – you can take a virtual tour to see what it looks like from every section in the stadium.

Here is a look from Section 103 – Row 10:

Going much higher up, here is a look from Section 444 – Row 3:

Taking it near the top of the stadium, here is a look from Section 541 – 10:

The completion of SoFi Stadium is close to coming to an end. The last update that we had, they were at about 85% of it being finished. After playing in a soccer stadium that didn’t even seat 30,000, the Chargers are eager for the new chapter in the glorious stadium in Inglewood, CA.

Watch: Titans OT Dennis Kelly scores his second Fat Guy Touchdown of the season

For the second time this season, Titans offensive tackle Dennis Kelly scored a Fat Guy Touchdown.

Fat Guy Touchdowns! We all love them, and this season, there have now been eight instances in which a player over 300 pounds has taken the ball into the end zone. But the only player to do it twice this season is Titans offensive tackle Dennis Kelly, whose one-yard pass from Ryan Tannehill put the Titans up 17-7 on the Chiefs in the first half of the AFC Championship game.

RELATED: Every Fat Guy Touchdown scored in the 2019 season

With the Chiefs selling out against the run in the red zone, Tannehill had an easy open receiver.

At six-foot-8 and 321 pounds, Kelly became the heaviest player in NFL history to catch a touchdown pass in the postseason.

Kelly’s first touchdown came against the Jaguars in Week 12, and it made up for a previous error.

Earlier in the Titans’ 42-20 eventual win, Kelly gave up a strip-sack of Tannehill to Jacksonville pass-rusher Yannick Ngakoue, which represented the first time Tennessee hadn’t converted in the red zone since Tannehill replaced Marcus Mariota as the starter in Week 7. Kelly at least partially made up for that flub with this one-yard touchdown catch with 13:13 left in the third quarter.

This was the first of a four-touchdown barrage for the Titans in the third quarter, which put the game away. And it put the Titans as the only team on our list with two touchdown passes to the big guys.

To his credit, Kelly gave all the praise to his predecessor.

“I learned from the best,” Kelly said. “(Quessenberry’s) catch was a lot more challenging. “I’ve gone on a couple routes before here and there. But that one was the first one for this. (Offensive coordinator Arthur Smith) and I have always joked about – since I’ve been here – that he would try and get me one. So, it just happened to be it worked out well. It’s a cool feeling.”

We’ll see if the TItans can keep the creativity rolling against a Chiefs offense that has all the quick-strike capability any defense could handle.

And now here we are, with the Sixers …

And now here we are, with the Sixers charging headlong toward the playoffs, ready to make good on what head coach Brett Brown has proclaimed is a championship-caliber team. This is new territory for Brown, who was hired as coach seven years ago, just when the team embarked on an epic intentional collapse — dubbed “The Process” — in order to position itself near the head of the worst-goes-first line in the drafting of the best college players. The team set records for losing over four years, and Brown, all along, stood behind this method, often talking about his players as if helping them become men might be his real job. Was Nerlens Noel, a center the team drafted in the early days of the Process, engaged in timeouts? Was he helping teammates off the floor? How was he comporting himself on planes when the team went on the road? At the end of 2014, when Embiid was proving to be high-maintenance as he rehabbed a broken foot, Brown said this: “Joel Embiid has a good heart. At the end of the day, he has a good heart. I don’t throw that sentence out lightly. That needs to be the criteria of everybody in here.”

Meanwhile, Brown’s approach hasn’t …

Meanwhile, Brown’s approach hasn’t changed. He talks up his best players, never criticizing them publicly. And to this point, it’s worked, obviously: Embiid and Simmons, 25 and 23 years old, are All Stars. But they still have a big piece of themselves to overcome, or to unlock. They still need to grow up. Which gives Brown, who started out in Philly with all the room in the world, a dilemma: Suddenly, he has very little time. Sixers owner Josh Harris has a history of listening to the noise of fans and media, plenty of whom think the team’s head coach should stop babying his two stars and force-feed their growth, given that they’re being paid tens of millions a year and we’re so close to that championship.

IT MIGHT SEEM, then, a bit strange that …

IT MIGHT SEEM, then, a bit strange that Brett Brown talks a lot about toughness as central to what he’s all about, though it’s not by accident. “Philly tough, Philly strong” was the banner phrase of an early-season team promo featuring the coach’s voice. Talking toughness is a part of getting his team to play in a certain style, but for Brown, it’s also been a natural way of connecting to the city, of molding a certain persona. “You become a spokesperson and mouthpiece of the owners and players,” Brown says. “I am quite calculated on what I want to talk about.” It helps his standing here, too.

But Brown, who’s 58, does come by …

But Brown, who’s 58, does come by toughness, in his own way, naturally. He grew up in seaside Maine towns where his father coached basketball. His father’s father made a living taking wealthy businessmen from New York and Boston and Montreal to fish or hunt moose and bear in Northern Maine. And his father — Brett’s great-grandfather — had a job as a railroad switchman, changing the tracks to direct trains either to Quebec or Montreal. “He had to shovel snow off the tracks and remove dead animals, too,” Brown says. “Which could be anything.”