Sunday’s AFC divisional NFL playoff game to wrap this weekend of football sees the New England Patriots host the Houston Texans in what is considered the most lopsided match up. The Patriots have steamrolled through their opponents lately including easily beating the same Texans a month ago. Houston, meanwhile, lost three of their last four games and come into today’s elimination match as an extremely heavy underdog.
Back on December 10, the Texans visited New England and got pasted by an embarrassing score of 42-14. The game was over shortly after it began as the Patriots scored touchdowns on their first three possessions, all passes from quarterback Tom Brady. The Texans were instantly in a hole and had to abandon their strong running game led by Arian Foster that was a main driving force behind their success earlier in the season.
The Patriots might want to write off an easy win considering what happened to the Broncos yesterday. Yes, the Patriots are strong at home and had no issue beating the Texans a month ago without tight end Rob Gronkowski, who is active for today’s game. But the Broncos were expected to walk all over the Ravens and instead lost in double overtime, ending what had been a storybook return for Peyton Manning to that point.
The Texans will need to get pressure on Brady if they want any chance of winning, something they failed to do in the previous meeting. J.J. Watt led the league in sacks yet didn’t touch Brady in that game so you can bet he’ll be pumped up to improve on that performance. How effective the Texans defense is should be answered after the first couple drives.
It’s possible the Patriots will be a little rusty after having two weeks off, while the Texans are coming off their wild card victory over the Bengals last week. Defensively they were strong in that game by limiting a fairly potent Bengals offense to only 13 points. On the other side of the ball, the Texans offense wasn’t clicking as strongly as it had been earlier in the season.
The last NFL divisional playoff game that will finalize the conference finals participants kicks off at 4:30pm EST / 1:30pm PST in high definition on CBS free over the air or via a satellite/cable subscription. Though not free, you can alternately watch the official online live streaming version via NFL Sunday Ticket here. Despite this game feeling like a trap game for New England, my prediction is Tom Brady does what he does best and puts the Patriots in a position to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl again with a 27-16 victory.
