The Miami Dolphins emerged from the middle of their Super Bowl sandwich with a 31-17 victory over the New England Patriots on Sunday.

The Dolphins lost to the Philadelphia Eagles 31-17 last week. At 8:30 a.m. CST Sunday, Miami will play the Kansas City Chiefs in Frankfurt, Germany. The Chiefs defeated the Eagles 38-35 in last season’s Super Bowl.

“We’re excited to come out with a win,” Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said. “It’s tough to sweep any team in your division. Again, a Bill Belichick-coached team is tough to beat anytime, anyplace, anywhere, so I’m proud of those guys. Right now, we’re just going to enjoy this victory, and we’ll watch the film, learn what we can get better at and we’ll focus on our next opponent.”

On Sunday, Tagovailoa completed 30-of-45 passes for 324 yards with three touchdowns and one interception as he ran his record against the Patriots to 6-0, including a 24-17 victory over New England on Sept. 17.

“If you look at a lot of the games, none of them were just runaway games,” Tagovailoa said. “They were almost all to the end. To me, those are always tough games. If you turn the ball over the way I have, that makes it a tough game and you keep those guys in that game. And you can’t keep those guys like that in the game.”

Miami punted from the New England 39-yard line and Tagovailoa threw an interception from the Miami 30 on the Dolphins’ first two possessions.

Tagovailoa came back with a 42-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Tyreek Hill with 22 seconds left in the first quarter and a 1-yard TD pass to wide receiver Cedrick Wilson Jr. with 6:10 left in the first half as Miami took a 14-7 lead.

The lead was still seven points when the Dolphins took possession after New England’s final touchdown with 8:30 to play. Miami went on a 10-play, 75-yard drive that took 5:47 off the clock as Tagovailoa completed his four passes during the series for 51 yards, including a 31-yard touchdown throw to wide receiver Jaylen Waddle with 2:43 remaining to set the final score.

“It’s important for us offensively when it’s a one-score game to go out and basically not poop the bed, if you will,” Tagovailoa said. “It’s to go out and execute at a high level. We want to always end the game with the ball if we can, but in that sort of scenario we were looking for points as well, so any which way we could do that that’s what we were trying to do. And we were able to do that.”

For third straight game, Tagovailoa was matched against another former Alabama quarterback. This time, it was his backup with the Crimson Tide, Mac Jones.

Jones completed 19-of-29 passes for 161 yards with two touchdowns and one interception.

Jones capitalized on New England’s first-quarter interception with a 24-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Kendrick Bourne as the Patriots took a 7-0 lead with 3:32 left in the first quarter.

Jones’ other TD pass came on a 3-yard toss to wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster as New England cut the lead to 24-17 with 8:30 to play.

The Patriots had two possessions that lasted more than five plays. Smith-Schuster’s touchdown reception ended a 13-play, 81-yard drive. New England had a nine-play, 52-yard drive in the second quarter that ended when Miami cornerback Jalen Ramsey picked off Jones at the Dolphins 11-yard line.

Outside of those two possessions, the Patriots offense produced 85 yards.

On the first play of the second half, Tagovailoa lost the football on a botched handoff, and former Alabama linebacker Anfernee Jennings recovered at the Miami 19-yard line for New England. But a third-down sack caused New England to settle for a 38-yard field goal that reduced the Dolphins’ lead to 17-10 with 12:45 left in the third quarter.

“I feel like if I executed a little better, maybe it’s a different story,” Jones said.

After Tagovailoa’s touchdown pass to Waddle, New England had an incompletion, a 5-yard completion, a 9-yard loss on a sack and an incompletion to turn the ball over on downs with 1:52 left.

“A really good team, right?” Jones said of the Dolphins. “They made some plays out there. It’s frustrating, but at the end of the day, we had it a one-score game and couldn’t capitalize from the offensive side trying to get the score tied up.”

While Miami takes a 6-2 record to Germany, New England is 2-6 heading into a contest against the Washington Commanders at noon CST Sunday at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

“It’s not the record we want,” Jones said. “Have to really just review the game film, be where my feet are, see what I can do better as a quarterback. And everybody else will do that or try to do that. It’s hard, right? You don’t want to be in this position, but at the end of the day, we’re playing football and we got to go out there and figure it out.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.