Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs are going for a three-peat in a Super Bowl rematch.

This time, Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles have Saquon Barkley.

The Eagles and Chiefs will face off for the Lombardi Trophy for the second time in three years on Feb. 9 in New Orleans. Kansas City aims to become the first team to win three Super Bowls in a row.

“Each one of these is special,” Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said after being handed the Lamar Hunt Trophy, which is named after his father. “Now, we get to do something that’s never been done before. Chiefs kingdom, we’re heading to New Orleans to make history.”

Mahomes rallied the Chiefs to a 38-35 victory over the Eagles two years ago in Arizona and a 25-22 overtime win over San Francisco in Las Vegas last season.

The two-time Super Bowl and NFL MVP led Kansas City to a 32-29 win over Josh Allen and the Bills in the AFC championship game on Sunday, eliminating Buffalo for the fourth time in five years.

“It’s not about one guy, it’s not about a couple guys, it’s about the whole team,” Mahomes said.

With girlfriend Taylor Swift watching on the field, smiling and nodding in approval, Kelce shouted: “Never satisfied, baby!” and then sang a line from “Get Down Tonight” by KC and The Sunshine Band.

Earlier, the Eagles ran past the Washington Commanders 55-23 in the NFC title game behind seven rushing touchdowns, including three apiece from Barkley and Hurts.

It will be the 10th Super Bowl rematch and fifth within a five-year span. The winners of the four rematches within five years were the teams that won the first meeting, including the Chiefs over the 49ers last season.

Barkley had another 60-yard touchdown run plus two other rushing scores, finishing with 118 yards. His third TD from 60 yards or more in two weeks came on Philadelphia’s first play from scrimmage. No other player has three TDs of at least 60 yards in a playoff career.

“I always dreamed about it but the dream wasn’t about just getting there, it was to win it,” Barkley said of the Super Bowl.

Playing with an injured knee, Hurts threw for 246 yards and one touchdown to go with his three rushing scores.

“How about our quarterback,” coach Nick Sirianni shouted from the stage after the presentation of the George Halas Trophy. “He’s a stud. I knew he would play that way. I knew it. Don’t doubt him. All he does is win.”

The 55 points Philadelphia scored are the most by any team in a conference championship game since the 1970 merger.

The Eagles (17-3) are aiming for their second Super Bowl title in five tries. Backup quarterback Nick Foles led them to a 41-33 victory over Tom Brady and the New England Patriots seven years ago. Foles presented owner Jeffrey Lurie with the Halas trophy.

“We’re there to win it,” Lurie said about going back to the Super Bowl.

The Chiefs (17-2) are 4-2 in the Super Bowl and making their fifth appearance in six years with coach Andy Reid, who will be facing his former team again.

Reid spent his first 14 seasons in Philadelphia and won more games than any coach in franchise history. But the Eagles couldn’t win it all with Reid. They were 1-4 in the NFC championship game and lost to the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Be brave.

Go for it.

Those were the mantras Madison Keys turned to as she confronted the most significant points of her tennis career, trapped in the cauldron of a third set that was tied at 5-all, 30-all in the Australian Open final against two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka on Saturday.

No reason to be anything but aggressive now, Keys thought. No reason to try to wish there weren’t nerves accompanying the moment. No reason to worry — as the American long did along the journey from prodigy at age 12 to major champion less than a month before her 30th birthday — about what would happen if things didn’t quite work out.

“I just kept saying, ‘Be brave.’ And, ‘Go for it.’ I kind of just kept repeating that. That was really my goal for the day — to just be proud, no matter a win or a loss,” Keys said in an interview with The Associated Press after winning her first Grand Slam title with a 6-3, 2-6, 7-5 victory over the No. 1-ranked Sabalenka in Rod Laver Arena.

“I went after it, every single point. And if I missed it and I just didn’t execute, I could live with that. I didn’t want to have any sort of regret that I was passive and I missed. (Then) it could have been something where I thought: ‘I should have done something else,’” Keys said, her hands clasped as she recalled what transpired about two hours earlier. “So I kind of just kept saying that, over and over.”

She spread the credit for her achievement. To the team around her, including Bjorn Fratangelo, a former player who has been her partner for years, her coach since mid-2023 and her husband since November. To her therapist, with whom she spoke or texted frequently over the past two weeks. To her friends on tour who lifted her up when she needed it.

They all believed in Keys, she said, and now, lately, she believed in herself, too.

At her post-match news conference, Keys discussed at length the ways in which her outlook changed.

She used to be concerned about never living up to the hype that accompanied her from before she was even a teen and only increased when she made her first appearance in a Grand Slam semifinal at Melbourne Park at age 19 (she lost to Serena Williams). She used to think nothing about her tennis career would matter if she never managed to claim a major trophy. She used to assume the sport’s best never felt jitters like those hampering her during her first Grand Slam final at the U.S. Open at age 22 ( she lost to Sloane Stephens ).

Eventually, Keys let all of that go. It was OK not to obsess over others’ opinions. It was OK if she never won a Slam. It was OK to face the nerves, because, after all, that’s how the greats succeed — they feel discomfort but play through it.

“I was nervous my entire career. So is Novak (Djokovic). So was Roger (Federer). Everybody has been,” Fratangelo, a former player who looked on with reddened eyes as Keys accepted her trophy, said during the tournament. “It’s just how you deal with it. And she’s starting to deal with it in a better way.”

That was the case throughout her run, which featured five three-setters and four victories over top-10 seeds (No. 1 Sabalenka, No. 2 Iga Swiatek, No. 6 Elena Rybakina and No. 10 Danielle Collins ), including a trio of major champs (Sabalenka, Swiatek, Rybakina). No woman had defeated the top two players in the WTA rankings during one major since 2009.

Swiatek used the word “brave” to describe the ways Keys played while saving a match point before coming through in their final-set tiebreaker.

“To do it that way,” Keys said at her news conference, “I think, really, I thought to myself after the match that I can absolutely win on Saturday.”

She was so good at the start and down the stretch against Sabalenka.

From 5-all, 30-all, Keys claimed six of the last eight points. She hammered first-strike forehand winners on consecutive points to hold serve, then earned the lone break of the third set, closing it out with — fittingly — yet another forehand winner.

“If she can play consistently like that, I mean, it’s not much you can do,” Sabalenka said.

Keys was brave.

She went for it.

“My first semifinal here feels like it was forever ago. I mean, I honestly felt like I was a different person then. But I think that that kind of happens when so many things have happened throughout the past decade,” Keys told the AP. “It’s just kind of all accumulated to get to the point where I was finally able to just go out and play some really good tennis and walk away with a Grand Slam.”

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — There’s all sorts of ways beyond merely the score to measure just how dominant Jannik Sinner was while outplaying and frustrating Alexander Zverev during the 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-3 victory Sunday that earned the 23-year-old Italian a second consecutive Australian Open championship.

The zero break points Sinner faced. Or the 10 he accumulated. The 27-13 advantage in points that lasted at least nine strokes. Or the way Sinner accumulated more winners, 32 to 25, and fewer unforced errors, 27 to 45. The way Sinner won 10 of the 13 points that ended with him at the net. Or the way he only let Zverev go 14 of 27 in that category, frequently zipping passing shots out of reach.

Well, here’s is one more bit of evidence: what Zverev said about Sinner.

“I’m serving better than him, but that’s it. He does everything else better than me. He moves better than me. He hits his forehand better than me. He hits his backhand better than me. He returns better than me. He volleys better than me,” Zverev said. “At the end of the day, tennis has five or six massive shots — like, massive factors — and he does four or five of them better than me. That’s the reason why he won.”

High praise from a guy who is, after all, ranked No. 2. Sinner has held the No. 1 spot since last June and is not showing any signs of relinquishing it. This was the first Australian Open final between the men at No. 1 and No. 2 since 2019, when No. 1 Novak Djokovic defeated No. 2 Rafael Nadal — also in straight sets.

“It’s amazing,” Sinner said, “to achieve these things.”

The “things” include being the youngest man to leave Melbourne Park with the trophy two years in a row since Jim Courier in 1992-93, and the first man since Nadal at the French Open in 2005 and 2006 to follow up his first Grand Slam title by repeating as the champion at the same tournament a year later.

Sinner was asked later whether he felt more relief or excitement when he raised his arms after the last point was hi

“This one was joy. We managed to do something incredible this time, because the situation I was in was completely different from a year ago here,” he said. “I had more pressure.”

Probably true, but’s hard to tell.

Go to the start of 2024, and take stock. In that span, Sinner has won three of the five major tournaments, including the U.S. Open in September, meaning he now has claimed three straight hard-court Slams. His record is 80-6 with nine titles. His current unbeaten run covers 21 matches.

“There’s always something that can get better,” said one of his two coaches, Simone Vagnozzi. “He is playing really well right now and everything comes easily. But there will be tough moments ahead.”

The only thing that’s clouded the past 12 months for Sinner, it seems, is the doping case in which his exoneration was appealed by the World Anti-Doping Agency. He tested positive for a trace amount of an anabolic steroid twice last March but blamed it on an accidental exposure involving two members of his team who have since been fired. Sinner initially was cleared in August; a hearing in the WADA appeal is scheduled for April.

“I keep playing like this because I have a clear mind on what happened,” Sinner said Sunday. “I know if I would be guilty, I would not play like this.”

While he became the eighth man in the Open era (which began in 1968) to start his career 3-0 in Grand Slam finals, Zverev is the seventh to be 0-3, adding this loss to those at the 2020 U.S. Open and last year’s French Open.

Those earlier setbacks both came in five sets. This contest was not that close. Not at all.

“I’ll keep doing everything I can,” Zverev said, “to lift one of those trophies.”

Just before Zverev began speaking into a microphone during the trophy ceremony, a voice cried out from the stands, making reference to two of the player’s ex-girlfriends who accused him of physical abuse.

During the match, there truly was only one moment that contained a hint of tension. It came when Zverev was two points from owning the second set at 5-4, love-30. But a break point — and a set point — never arrived.

A year ago, Sinner went through a lot more trouble to earn his first major, needing to get past Novak Djokovic — who quit one set into his semifinal against Zverev on Friday because of a torn hamstring — before erasing a two-set deficit in the final against 2021 U.S. Open champion Daniil Medvedev.

This time, Sinner applied pressure with an all-around style that does not really appear to have holes.

He proved superior in every meaningful way other than aces, leaving Zverev shaking his head or trudging to the sideline with shoulders sagging or cracking his racket against the court or against another racket.

Perfectly understandable, given what Sinner can do to an opponent, especially on a hard court.

“The facts speak for themselves,” Zverev said. “He’s in a different universe right now.”

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Howard Fendrich has been the AP’s tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich. More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis