Patriots clinch No. 2 seed, playoff opponent and date revealed

The No. 2-seeded New England Patriots will take on the No. 7-seeded Los Angeles Chargers in the wild-card round of the playoffs next Sunday at 8:00 p.m. ET.

There was a chance for the Patriots to snag the No. 1 seed, but they needed the Chargers to defeat the Denver Broncos in Week 18. With the Broncos winning, the Patriots will now face the Chargers at Gillette Stadium in the first round.

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The Chargers and Patriots are no strangers to meeting each other in the playoffs. They have met four total times with the Patriots holding a 3-1 edge in postseason games. The last playoff matchup between the two teams was back in 2019, when they met in the 2018 divisional round. Tom Brady was the quarterback at the time, and the Patriots earned a 41-28 victory.

The only loss for the Patriots in the playoffs against the Chargers came in January 1964, when the Chargers bested the Patriots by a 51-10 score.

It will be a tough battle pitting quarterbacks Drake Maye and Justin Herbert against one another, along with coaches Mike Vrabel and Jim Harbaugh. Few expected the Patriots to ever be in this position as a 14-win team competing in the playoffs.

They could shake things up in a major way by ousting the Chargers and moving on to the second round of the postseason for the first time since their 2018 Super Bowl run.

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This article originally appeared on Patriots Wire: Patriots clinch No. 2 seed, playoff opponent and date revealed