The divisional playoffs, if you think about it, make for the most complete weekend of highly competitive football games possible. One week removed from the wild card, the weak teams have been squeezed out, and those who made it past the first round go on to face their respective conference’s best two regular season teams.
Here’s what to expect for the AFC divisional playoffs this week.
Houston Texans at Baltimore Ravens
Sun. 1:00 PM EST. M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore, Maryland
Even though It’ll be a tight race, and a lot of votes might go elsewhere, no one is more deserving of coach of the year honors than the Houston Texans’ Gary Kubiak.
Through the regular season, the Texans have watched as their starting quarterback – a sure-fire Pro Bowler when he was at his best – suffer a season-ending injury to his right foot in Week 10. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they’ve watched his backup, former first-round pick Matt Leinart, get knocked out for the season by a shoulder injury in his first game of relief for Schaub.
When you add injuries to wide receiver Andre Johnson, who missed nine games this season with a lingering hamstring injury, and outside linebacker Mario Williams, who was knocked out for the season with a torn pectoral after just five games, and the Texans have the same luck as some of the teams making the top picks in the draft.
But instead, they’re vying for a spot in the AFC championship game. Under Kubiak, the Texans haven’t missed a beat since losing their starting quarterbacks, and have shifted their strategy toward a running-heavy offense. With Arian Foster and Ben Tate in the backfield, the Texans have put together the league’s second-best rushing game, averaging 153 yards on the ground per game. With the ground attack taking the pressure off of rookie quarterback T.J. Yates, the Texans were able to put together a 10-win season and a 31-10 win over the young upstart Cincinnati Bengals.
In that wild card game, the Texans were able to get past Yates’ meek 159-yard passing performance quite easily, riding Foster’s 24-carry, 153-yard, two-touchdown ground attack.
Of course, helping matters is the Texans’ second-ranked defense, which held the Bengals potentially explosive offense to just 10 points.
All things considered, Houston has a tough team designed in the most traditional sense of a football squad.
The only problem, though, is they line up against a Baltimore team this Sunday that looks a lot like them, except healthy. Not to say Joe Flacco is an elite quarterback, but he’s definitely no T.J. Yates. And where Ray Rice pales in comparison to Arian Foster, he makes up for it with his impressive pass-catching and yards-after-the-catch capabilities.
And then there’s the defense. Houston does have the edge, but not by much. The Texans defense, giving up an average of 285.7 yards per game, rank second. The Ravens, giving up an average of 288.9 yards per game, rank third.
Remember, Baltimore is the team in this matchup that is not depleted by injury, and they’ve had the last two weeks to sit their starters. Even wide receiver Anquan Boldin, who had surgery on a partially torn meniscus that he was able to play with for about the entire season, has had time enough to recover, as of last week.
So the situation looks pretty favorable for Baltimore. A lot of people are also writing off the fact that all of the Ravens’ losses this year came on the road. That’s all fine, but in either case they were still losses to the Tennessee Titans, Jacksonville Jaguars, Seattle Seahawks and San Diego Chargers, whose combined record 29-35 on the regular season.
What we have here are two of the NFL’s most unpredictable teams playing on the season’s most unpredictable weekend. If both of these teams play to their potential, we could have the kind of tight, run-heavy, low-scoring game that people who understand football really like to see.
But with these two, anything can happen, and if that’s not reason enough to watch then you’re probably not a football fan.
