RSK correspondence and classically irreducible Kirillov-Reshetikhin crystals

We give a new combinatorial model of the Kirillov-Reshetikhin crystals of type $A_n^{(1)}$ in terms of non-negative integral matrices based on the classical RSK algorithm, which has a simple description of the affine crystal structure without using a promotion operator. We also have a similar description of the Kirillov-Reshetikhin crystals associated to exceptional nodes in the Dynkin diagrams of classical affine or non-exceptional type.