Houston def. Cincinnati 19-13
For mine, Houston deserved to win this one. At least, they deserved it more than the Bengals did. The game shouldn't even have been as close as it was. The Texans dominated on both sides of the football. Their big problem was converting big plays through the middle of the field into meaningful points inside the red zone.
One ill-advised Matth Schaub throw - and the resulting Pick-6 - was what kept Cincinnati in the game. They couldn't do much themselves on offense. Andy Dalton completed less than 50% of his passes, and big threat wide receiver AJ Green went missing for big stretches of a game. Simply put, your best player cannot afford to not turn up for about three quarters of a playoff contest. Cincinnati's defense, mostly, was helped out by the Texans' inability to convert in the red zone. On the field, it wasn't as close as 19-13. And the Bengals continue to chase their maiden playoff victory.
Relief in Houston, surely, after an alarming late-season slump that saw the Texans look less like the team that had started 11-1 and more like, say Oakland or Jacksonville. They have that all-important playoff win, Matt Schaub's first career post-season win, but are headed to New England next week. Tom Brady and company cleaned their clocks in Foxborough a few weeks back. The rested Patriots will probably be too much.
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