The Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots will play their wild-card contest on Saturday night in prime time.
In what will be one of the more intriguing matchups of wild-card weekend, the Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots will meet in Foxboro in the first round of the NFL Playoffs.
This pairing was somewhat improbable to begin with.
The Titans earned their spot with a victory in Week 17 over the Houston Texans, while the Pats fell from the No. 2 seed and a bye in the first round to the No. 3 seed thanks to a loss to the Miami Dolphins, and a Kansas City Chiefs win over the Los Angeles Chargers.
Now, the Pats and Titans will meet on Saturday, January 4th at 7:15 p.m. CST.
Here’s a look at the entire schedule for the wild-card weekend.
NFL Wild-Card round schedule
Saturday
Buffalo at Houston: 3:35 p.m. CST
Titans at Patriots: 7:15 p.m. CST
Sunday
Minnesota at New Orleans: 12:05 p.m. CST
Seattle at Philadelphia: 3:40 p.m. CST
And, if we want to look ahead, here’s the possible schedule for next week’s games depending on who wins.
NFL Divisional round schedule
NFL Divisional Playoffs
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) December 30, 2019
Sat, Jan. 11
🏈4:35 PM (ET) Philly/Seattle/Minn at SF (NBC)
🏈8:15 PM (ET) Houston/Buffalo/Tenn at Balt (CBS)
Sun., Jan. 12
🏈3:05 PM (ET) New England/Houston/Buff at KC (CBS)
🏈6:40 PM (ET) New Orleans/Philly/Seattle at Green Bay (FOX)
That’s right, if Tennessee wins on Saturday it could be facing yet another prime time game against the Baltimore Ravens next week. Interesting.
When you talk about storylines going into Titans-Pats, the one that will immediately pop-up will be Titans head coach Mike Vrabel’s connection to the Patriots, and in particular head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady.
Of course, Vrabel won a Super Bowl with his former mates, and it was very clear the trio were still close when Tennessee and New England held joint practices before the start of the season.
Tennessee will also be looking to exact a little playoff revenge after New England knocked it out of the playoffs in 2017-18 in a 35-14 win for the Pats.
A lot has changed since then, and the Titans in particular are a very different team than the one the Patriots saw that year. We’ll see if they can prove it on Saturday night.