The regular season is over and there are 12 teams remaining in the run to the Super Bowl. And at the top of the AP Pro32 poll Alexander Mattison Jersey , the new year starts right where the previous one ended.The New Orleans Saints, Los Angeles Rams and Chicago Bears, the top three seeds in the NFC, retained their top three spots in the final AP Pro32 poll of the season.New Orleans received 11 of the 12 first-place votes for 382 points in balloting Wednesday by media members who regularly cover the NFL. New Orleans will open the playoffs at home in the divisional round on Sunday, Jan 13.“The Saints lost in Week 1 and Week 17, both at home,” said Ira Kaufman of Fox 13 in Tampa, Florida. “In between, Drew Brees and company established themselves as the team to beat in the Super Bowl chase.”The Rams, who also finished 13-3 in the regular season, will start their postseason at the Coliseum on Saturday, Jan. 12. The Bears will close wild-card weekend when they host the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles on Sunday.The next six spots in the poll are all taken by the AFC’s playoffs teams.The Chiefs, who have the AFC’s top seed, are No. 4. Kansas City, which received the remaining first-place vote — from John Czarnecki of Fox Sports — has won the AFC West for three consecutive seasons. Patrick Mahomes, who finished with 5,097 yards and 50 TD passes, will try to get Kansas City its first home playoff win since the 1993 season.“MVP front-runner Patrick Mahomes finished a brilliant first season as a starter with 50 touchdown passes http://www.minnesotavikingsteamonline.com/dru-samia-jersey ,” said Newsday’s Bob Glauber. “With home-field advantage in the AFC playoffs, is a Super Bowl berth next?”The Los Angeles Chargers and New England Patriots finished in a tie at No. 5 in the poll.The Patriots, who won the AFC East for the 10th straight season and 15th time in the past 16 seasons, are the No. 2 seed in the AFC. They are trying to reach their ninth Super Bowl in the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady era. They are also trying to become the first team since the 1990s Buffalo Bills to return to the Super Bowl after losing it the previous season, and the first since the 1992 Bills to make a third successive trip to the big game.The Chargers, despite finishing with the same record as the Chiefs at 12-4, lost the tiebreaker and are the No. 5 seed in the AFC. They will head to Baltimore to face the AFC North champion Ravens on Sunday. The Ravens are No. 9 in the poll.AFC South rivals Houston and Indianapolis are Nos. 7 and 8 in the poll. Those teams will open the postseason in Houston on Saturday when they meet for the third time after splitting their previous meetings.“Just wish they had another WR,” Czarnecki said of the Texans. Houston’s DeAndre Hopkins finished second in the NFL with 1,572 yards, but the depth took a hit when Demaryius Thomas was lost for the season with an Achilles tendon injury.Seattle and Dallas, who meet Saturday night in Texas, are 10th and 11th in the poll. The Seahawks and Cowboys both finished 10-6. They met in Seattle in Week 3, when the Seahawks won 24-13.The team that made the biggest climb from the first poll, which was released before the season started, was the Bears, who started out at No. 28 and finished at No. 3. And the team that had the biggest drop was the Jacksonville Jaguars, who began at No. 7 and ended up at No. 28.The Arizona Cardinals, who finished with the worst record in the NFL at 3-13 and have the No. 1 pick in April’s draft Daniel Jones Jersey , were a unanimous choice for last place in the poll. The Colts couldn’t have known how well it would work out, when they stumbled into Frank Reich after another coach turned them down.But Reich himself turned down a chance to wear their horseshoe long before then.Via Peter King of NBC’s , Reich detailed at a charity event the way he turned down an offer to become Peyton Manning’s quarterbacks coach in 1998, when then General Manager Bill Polian offered to bring in his former quarterback upon his retirement as a player.“So after 14 years of playing, finishing playing in 1998, I got a phone call from Bill Polian saying, ‘Hey, would you come and work for me here in Indianapolis?’” Reich said. “The draft wasn’t yet but they were getting ready. He was getting ready to draft a pretty good player. He said, ‘I want you to come here and be quarterback coach.’ This is true story. He’s like, ‘I want you to come here. You’re exactly the guy. I want you to be his quarterback coach. You’ll be his quarterback coach, then you’ll be a coordinator. And you’ll be a head coach in this league in a matter of years.’”Reich had just finished his playing career after a stint with the Lions, and said his first thought was that he wanted to spend time with his daughters (who were 8, 6, and 2 at the time), though he said it was a hard call because of his background with Polian (who hired him in Buffalo and Carolina).A decade later, after being a dad, he talked to Polian again about getting into coaching, realizing it would probably be a much longer path. Polian told him he’d have to start as an entry-level coach and work his way up.“I volunteered for six months without pay Quincy Williams II Jersey ,” Reich said. “They put me up. They paid for my hotel room. I was just trying to show the staff, Tom Moore and the offensive staff that they could trust me — Tony Dungy, Jim Caldwell and the crew. Started out at the bottom and then just slowly worked my way up, thinking it might not ever happen.“I can honestly say that never one time did I ever regret that decision that I made. I knew when I made the decision in ’98 not to get into it right away that I was potentially giving that up. I say all that to say that when it came full circle, to be able to be the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, I mean, . . . for me, and my wife and our family, it was like literally a dream come true. Anybody who knows anything about it or read anything about it, knows that in my heart it was a God thing. I just think it was meant to be for me to be in this city, with this team, with this organization, for this time. It’s pretty special.”And after he stepped in last year, and helped pull the Colts out of a 1-5 start to the playoffs, the Colts are certainly grateful that Reich ended up at the destination, regardless the path.