After New England’s 41-28 victory over the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday, the mood in the Patriots locker room was calm. It was like it was just another day on the job.

But Patriots safety Devin McCourty was already preparing for the Kansas City Chiefs, who will host the Patriots Sunday.

The two teams met in October in Foxborough in a game the Patriots held on to win 43-40. McCourty remembers that game and said playing in it will help the team prepare for the matchup.

“I think you’re preparing from a lot of games, there’s going to be wrinkles in the game," he said after the Patriots beat the Chargers. "I mean, this is to go to the Super Bowl. So yes, that helps, but we’ve got a lot of work in front of us if we want to go beat that team at home.”

They’ll need all the practice they can get. In only his second year in the league, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw for 50 touchdowns and just over 5,000 yards. That’s only the second time in league history that a quarterback has hit both of those marks.

And what he's done this year may be the direction football is going — lots of passes and lots of scoring.

There are many reasons the league is moving in this direction. One is more and more quarterbacks are playing on high school and college teams that use pass-crazy offenses with nicknames like The Spread or The Air Raid. And now, those concepts are making their way up to the pros with quarterbacks like Mahomes.

"I think he's a great player on a great team that's very well coached," Patriots head coach Bill Belichick said of the Chiefs' quarterback. "They have a great scheme and a great system. He's got a ton of weapons. So, he'll be tough to handle, as will their entire offense, as will their entire team. So we'll need our best game, we'll need our best effort and that's what we're preparing to give.

Kansas City's system has incorporated elements of the Air Raid that Mahomes ran when playing at Texas Tech, where he once threw for 734 yards in a single game, a college FBS record.

But it's not just Mahomes who's putting up gaudy numbers. Last year's Super Bowl, which New England fans may remember the Pats lost 41-33, was the second-highest scoring Super Bowl ever. And the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pats put up a combined 1,151 yards, the most ever in a Super Bowl.

It's no secret that the league wants higher scores to keep viewers interested, so they changed the rules this year to make it harder to tackle the quarterback, the game's most valuable asset. That's helped passing numbers this season to soar.

This weekend, football fans will be able to see the fruits of those changes in action. Mahomes has the second most passing yards in the league this season, while Tom Brady has the fourth most passing yards in league history. And he's not done yet.

"Yeah, it's just unreal, just having him at the quarterback position, not having no change, don't got to worry about that," said Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski of quarterback Tom Brady. "And just ... consistency he's been bringing year in and year out, it's been the same and just how prepared he's been, how prepared and ready to go he is, there's just no reason to ever worry at that position for us."

And on the other side of the ball, New England is doing everything it can to try to slow down the Chiefs offensive attack, which picked up 446 total yards the last time these two teams met. In true Patriots fashion, safety Patrick Chung said stopping that attack came down to "just doing your job."

"Really, it comes down to just being focused and doing what you’re supposed to do," he said. "Playing good team defense is what’s going to help us — no individual playmakers out there, just everyone doing our job.

The AFC title game has a trip to the Super Bowl at stake. But beyond that, what we may be watching is the Patriots — a team representing where football is right now, against the Chiefs — a team a lot of people are saying may be a preview of where football is going.