(Getty)
It’s the Chiefs.
After 16 regular season games fighting off their opening day defeat, Houston gets their rematch on Wild Card Weekend. Kansas City may have started 1-5 before rattling off 11 straight wins, but that one win was a 27-20 victory at Houston’s expense.
In that game, Brian Hoyer threw an interception on the first pass of the season. He was later benched for Ryan Mallett, as part of a QB saga that many believed would doom the Texans season. It took four different quarterbacks to lead the Texans to 9-7, but Hoyer has earned the right to be the Texans starter.
Both teams started the season with franchise running backs, and have seemingly reinvented themselves without them. Arian Foster and Jamaal Charles were the souls of these offenses, but neither made it to Thanksgiving.
With an imbalanced offense, both these teams turned to defense to keep them competitive in 2015. At 11-5 Kansas City obviously did it better, finishing the year with 41 sacks and 21 interceptions, both top-five marks in the NFL. Houston had just 37 sacks, but they will be full strength headed into next week. The Texans will have both Clowney and Watt up front, while the Chiefs have been dealing with injuries to Tamba Hali and Justin Houston.
The Chiefs started as the road favorite, but the spread is shrinking. RJ Bell had the spread opening at four points, but that number was very quickly trimmed to -3.
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