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Gresh & Zo: Patriots Advance To AFC Championship

BOSTON (CBS) - Andy Gresh and Scott Zolak were fired up on Monday morning to talk about the Patriots advancing to the AFC Championship game after pounding the Colts 43-22 Saturday night.

The Patriots now travel to Denver where they'll take on familiar foe Peyton Manning, so the guys talked about that in addition to how they got there.

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Another year, another AFC Championship game - that's three times in three years if you're keeping score at home.

"They're back in the AFC Championship. My god, what if Bill Belichick could draft?" said a sarcastic Andy Gresh Monday morning.

Scott Zolak jumped in to the conversation, and said that Tom Brady is the easy choice for team MVP for the way he kept the ship afloat during the storm.

However, this team is relying heavily on the ground game now, and LeGarrette Blount has really taken the role of bell cow and ran with it.

"Tom Brady has held everything together - he's the glue. But LeGarrette Blount has been your second half MVP," said Zo.

Hard to argue with him there, Saturday night was the second time in three games Blount has ran for over 150 yards, and he now has eight touchdowns in the past three games.

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So while Blount has been on the radar now over the last month or so, it was a rookie linebacker coming out of nowhere that really grabbed Zolak's attention.

"What wowed me the other night was Jamie Collins. You could see the freakish athletic ability that he displayed. For a linebacker to get out there in coverage in a crouch corner position, lined up on a receiver with no help over the top just staring at him - linebackers don't do that."

"Jamie Collins had one hell of a game. He was phenomenal the other night," said Zo.

Gresh pointed out the obvious special teams mishaps, like the snap over the head of the punter and the amount of careless penalties - but he argued the player of the game was kicker Stephen Gostkowski, who filled in as punter for the injured Ryan Allen.

"Gostkowski did about as good a job as Ryan Allen would have done given the situation that they were in. I don't want what Gostkowski did to get lost in the shuffle of the great play of LeGarrette Blount and Jamie Collins."

Gresh also applauded the play-calling of New England, who stuck to the run and "kept hammering them" - listen to the full discussion below:

Patriots Advance

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