FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- With a Super Bowl LI date ahead with the high-flying Atlanta Falcons' offense, the Tom Brady-led New England Patriots attack shifted into higher gear at just the right time.

Playing fast and turnover-free and spreading the field with three and four wide receivers on the majority of their snaps in an aggressive passing game, the Patriots buried the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship Game, posting a 36-17 victory at a rockin’ Gillette Stadium. Brady was 32-of-42 for 384 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. The 384 yards broke his Patriots playoff record.

"Any time you're on the field with No. 12, it's special," said wide receiver Chris Hogan, who led the Patriots with nine catches for 180 yards and two touchdowns. "You never take that for granted. He's the greatest and he's a huge part of why we're so successful."

At one point in the third quarter, Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” played inside the stadium, and Jon Bon Jovi himself was shown on the video board singing along from a private box as a guest of owner Robert Kraft. That perfectly captured the festive mood for Patriots fans.

Meanwhile, it might have been around the same time that the scoreboard operator at Houston’s NRG Stadium began loosening up because Super Bowl LI features offensive fireworks that could light up the scoreboard at historic levels.

It starts with the quarterbacks: Brady versus Matt Ryan, the two leading vote-getters at the position for the Associated Press All-Pro team (Ryan had 29 votes and Brady 14).

In 2010, Ryan’s third year in the NFL, he was a fill-in writer for Peter King of Sports Illustrated’s “Monday Morning Quarterback,” and he relayed how he studied top quarterbacks that offseason.

“I learned several things about the game and about my own game during my film work, but I was mostly impressed with the patience under fire exhibited by [Peyton] Manning and [Tom] Brady,” Ryan wrote.

Meanwhile, Brady recently saluted Ryan’s growth in 2016, which has him as a leading candidate for the NFL’s MVP award.

“I think Matt has had an incredible year. I think he is as deserving as anybody. He’s got that team playing well,” Brady said on sports radio WEEI on Jan. 9.

A fifth Super Bowl championship for Brady would be especially sweet, given the way his season started, with him serving a four-game suspension as part of the NFL’s Deflategate penalties. Having the Lombardi Trophy handed to him by commissioner Roger Goodell would make for some compelling theater. The home crowd chanted Goodell’s name at various points of the second half of Sunday’s victory. They also asked “Where is Roger?” as Goodell’s decision to attend the NFC Championship instead of the AFC title game was a big storyline in New England last week (Goodell hasn’t been to a game at Gillette Stadium since Deflategate).

"I didn't hear that chant [but] I did hear them signing to Bon Jovi though," Brady said. "That was pretty cool."

Meanwhile, there’s a close-to-his-football-roots storyline for Ryan, who played college football at Boston College, 25 miles north of the Patriots’ home field.

So here we go. It’s Super Bowl LI: Falcons vs. Patriots.

It isn’t too early to check the scoreboard to make sure it can handle the surge that is coming to town.