Next stop, Foxboro.

A breakaway, momentum-driven Jacksonville Jaguars express train is headed for Gillette Stadium and an AFC Divisional playoff encounter with the perfect AFC East champion New England Patriots.

On Saturday night (8:15 p.m.), it's the team that our nation loves to hate - the history-driven Pats - against everybody's newest best friend, coach Jack Del Rio and the Jaguars.

Jacksonville, now 12-5, had only won three of four down the stretch. Still, the Jags were favored in Pittsburgh and prevailed, despite playing the Steelers' game on the Steelers' mushy, torn-up, pathetic turf. It took four Pittsburgh turnovers and a 96-yard Maurice Jones-Drew kick return to do it, but Jacksonville prevailed.

Quarterback David Garrard looked to be headed for an ignominious first playoff start in the middle of a 9-for-21, two-interception performance. His QB rating of 41.9 wasn't even half his admirable regular-season score of 102.2.

But he broke out of the doldrums with a fourth-and-2 draw play on the final drive, bringing his team into game-winning field-goal range.

As the Patriot braintrust turns its complete attention to Jacksonville, Garrard is not the problem or the worry - impressive regular season or not. Nope.

Saturday night's squabble will test the New England defense, starting first and foremost with the aging linebacking corps.

There is no secret with the Jaguars. They will look to Jones-Drew and one of Bill Belichick's personal favorites, Fred Taylor, to keep Tom Brady on the sidelines.

Tedy Bruschi and Junior Seau are in for the week of their lives. So, too, is safety Rodney Harrison, who will be allowed free reign up at the line of scrimmage to stop the run, mainly because the Jags pose so little of a threat through the air.

This trio of elders didn't exactly cover itself in glory in the finale with the Giants. Too often, one or more of them whiffed or were steamrolled on a tackle attempt at New York's Brandon Jacobs.

Jacksonville offers these three a shot at redemption.

Which Patriots defense will show Saturday - the one that had nine successive red-zone stops headed into the Giants game or the one that allowed four New York TDs on four trips?

Seau, Bruschi and Harrison most likely hold the answers.

...

This corner kicked the Spanos family and San Diego GM A.J. Smith around a bit following the Pats' Week 2 thumping of the Chargers.

The curious hiring of Norv Turner as head coach looked pretty awful then, and despite the win yesterday, still does so now.

But Smith knew he was only one tiny piece away from allowing his team's talent to show through. The Chargers, 14-2 in 2006, were in deep trouble after four weeks at 1-3, with an offense sputtering at 17 points a game.

Unlike the 2006 Pats, who didn't re-sign holdout receiver Deion Branch and did nothing but scour the waiver wire to replace him, the Chargers carved out their own reversal of fortune, trading for Miami playmaker Chris Chambers.

Their main deep threat, Chambers has been the perfect complement in an offense revolving around tight end Antonio Gates and running back LaDainian Tomlinson.

Including yesterday, Chambers has caught 41 balls for 775 yards, a sparkling average of 18.9 yards per. Chambers, with six grabs for 121 yards, nearly turned the game single handedly against Tennessee yesterday.

Indianapolis safety Bob Sanders is going to have his hands full with Chambers next week.

...

A few random notes from four tremendously entertaining football games:

* A bundle of folks will point to the loss of Willie Parker doing in the Steelers Saturday night against Jacksonville. I'll stick with the fact that there was no Joey Porter on the Pittsburgh defense to make that giant play when it counted.

It was Porter, now with the Dolphins, who so often lowered the boom from the edge when it counted most. He's the guy who would have clothes-lined Garrard from the backside to negate that game-winning QB draw. The Steelers let Porter slip away ... along with their postseason fortunes.

* The letter of apology officially goes out to Tom Coughlin tomorrow after his tired, beaten, yet somehow electric Giants went into Tampa and dominated the Bucs.

* From that same game, I have but one question: How did John Gruden ever win a Super Bowl? There's a coach who crumbles at the first sign of adversity.

* If I were Scott Pioli I'd trade the Pats' No. 1 pick, the seventh choice overall, for Seattle middle linebacker Lofa Tatupu. Can you believe the Seahawks' tackling machine started his college career at UMaine?

* One final observation - Why does every coach of a predominantly running team hit the panic button when they get down one touchdown?

Tampa went to the air too quickly and watched the Giants take over. Tennessee did the same when it was on the way to pounding the Chargers into submission. And the Redskins let it melt away in the rain in Seattle, too.