Patriots fans are starting to book their flights to Denver, as there’s still more football to be played this season and visions of the hometown team in the Super Bowl become crystal clear.

“When I get home, I’m booking my Denver flights,” Patriots super fan Keith Birchall told the Herald Sunday evening after New England dropped the hammer on Texans, 28-16, in a snowy Divisional Round clash at Gillette Stadium

“I looked last night; I’m like, ‘I can do this, round trip out of Boston, straight to Denver,’” Birchall added. “Now, it’s a done deal. We’re all talking about who wants to go? Who’s going to do this?”

Very few Patriots fans, if any, even the biggest believers, predicted at the beginning of the season that quarterback Drake Maye and head coach Mike Vrabel would help spearhead such a turnaround that has New England just one game away from punching its ticket to the Super Bowl.

Especially not after the Patriots’ season opener. Nineteen weeks ago to the day, fans let out loud boos as they started to exit Gillette, with the Patriots losing a dud, 20-13, to the lowly Raiders, a team that finished 3-14.

David Simone, 33, flew up for Sunday’s contest, his first time attending a Patriots game. He thought about how the season started as he engaged in pregame festivities with his family and friends outside the stadium.

“The Raiders beat us in Week 1,” Simone told the Herald. “I was thinking that there was still some potential, but that it would take a few years to progress. Now, we’re looking at a real shot at the Super Bowl.”

Birchall is known by Patriots fans as the ‘Silver Bullet,’ as he decks himself out in silver face paint. He’s been a super fan for the past 23 years, often seen on the stadium’s jumbotrons and even in documentaries on the team’s past successes in the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick days.

Birchall said he predicted New England would get to 10 wins. Led by Maye and a stout defense, even those expectations have been surpassed.

“The biggest thing about this year is the continuity in the locker room,” Birchall said. “They’re just all together. They got that cohesion.”

Things in the NFL change quickly.

The last time that the Patriots hosted Houston? Maye made his starting debut on Oct. 13, 2024, throwing touchdowns to Kayshon Boutte and Demario Douglas.

The second-year quarterback connected with those weapons for scores, again, on Sunday. The difference? In 2024, New England lost to the Texans, 41-21, as they fell to 1-5 under head coach Jerod Mayo, who was fired after his first and only season with the Patriots last January.

Vrabel and Maye have brought fresh life to the team, with fans confident that this is just the beginning of another dynasty in Foxboro.

“This Patriots team is so magical right now,” fan Brian Babz told the Herald during pregame festivities at the Tailgater 2000, in a parking lot across Route 1. “There’s something about this team that a lot of the old heads will say, ‘Nothing can replicate 2001,’ but the 2025 Patriots are going to be in that upper echelon.”

Sunday’s win also fell on January 18, a significant date in Patriots franchise history, with New England punching their tickets to the Super Bowl in wins over the Colts in the 2004 and 2015 AFC Championships.

Gerry McCarthy, of Sandwich, has been a season ticket holder since 1980 and serves as a key voice to the Tailgater 2000, offering hundreds of fans a prayer – a poem he writes as a rallying cry.

He’s had to alter a verse in the prayer, going from hoping that the Patriots would double, and then triple, and then quadruple their wins from their 4-13 seasons the past two dismal years.

“It’s like back in the old days, you know?” McCarthy said. “This is what we used to do back in January.”

No matter how the AFC Championship goes in Denver against former Patriots backup QB Jarrett Stidham, “No one is going to be upset,” Shalisa Keys, of Newport, Rhode Island, told the Herald.

Patriots superfan Keith Birchall, ‘The Silver Bullet’ celebrates on the field after the Patriots win Sunday. (Lance Reynolds/Boston Herald)