How Houston Texans Became NFL’s Biggest Playoff Underdogs
Ask Tom Brady about how the New England Patriots will fare against the Houston Texans on Saturday and he’ll tell you they can’t them lightly. In fact, he’ll tell you the NFL is a “day-to-day” league and it doesn’t really matter that the Patriots have beaten the Texans in five straight games by a ridiculously large margin because anything can happen in the postseason.
However, in Las Vegas, the Patriots couldn’t be a surer bet to take down the Texans.
The Patriots opened as 14.5-point favorites against the Texans and the line has quickly risen to -16 and counting. According to ESPN, that’s one of the four largest playoff point spreads the NFL has seen in the last 40 seasons. The only teams to have been favored by more than 14 points in that time are the Dallas Cowboys in 1978, the San Francisco 49ers twice in 1994 – first against the Chicago Bears, then against the San Diego Chargers – and the Minnesota Vikings in 1998.
Perhaps more importantly for Patriots fans, each of those teams won their games, with only the Cowboys failing to cover the spread.
It doesn’t help that the Patriots last beat the Texans 27-0 in Week 3 of this season when Brady was still serving his suspension for his role in Deflategate. As a result, Jason Simbal of CG Technology told ESPN they’ve taken home almost $19,000 on the Patriots compared to only $196 on the Texans thus far.
So if you happen to be a Texans fan looking for a gargantuan payday, here’s to hoping Saturday is your lucky day. And if Brock Osweiler and the Texans can figure out a way to beat Belichick’s machine, then it would easily end up being one of the biggest upsets in NFL history, especially when you consider the very bumpy road the team took to get to this point.