Wild-Card Afterword: Texans vs Bengals

Arian Foster (23) ran for 140 yards and a touchdown on
32 carries, but fumbles twice in a 19-13 wild-card win.
Photo credit to The Washington Post.

It didn’t have the typical feeling of a game played in a playoff atmosphere, but the score was close throughout and that mostly made up for it.

I expected the Bengals defense to play well, but I didn’t expect the Texans’ offense to perform so poorly. On the other side of the ball, things went about as I expected for both teams.

Houston’s defense dominated, giving up just two field goals to Cincinnati, while the Bengals’ lone trip to the end zone came on an interception return by Leon Hall. It was an amazing play and it’s better seen than explained, so you can watch that replay here.

The Texans’ offense, on the other hand, was sporadic to put it kindly. Their game plan was just short of awful. They had a few drives where they ran good plays, and those were the drives where they put points on the board, as you would expect. But they had too many drives where they ran bad routes and run plays in passing situations.

Arian Foster gained nearly 150 yards on the ground and is the first player in NFL history to have over 100 rushing yards in each of his first three playoff games. I’m not sure how much weight this stat has, though, as Houston faced 17 third downs and failed to convert exactly as many times as the Bengals, who were 0/9 on third down.

Matt Schaub made his first career playoff start – T.J. Yates started both playoff games for Houston last year – so I chalk some of his struggles to nerves. But he didn’t really seem to play much differently than he has over the past five or six games this season.

I’ll look more closely at the matchups later in the week, but I’d be very surprised if I come up with any result other than a big win for New England when the Texans travel to Foxboro next weekend.

For the Bengals, Andy Dalton missed a wide-open A.J. Green in the end zone with less than three minutes to play. That score would have given Cincinnati a one-point lead and forced Houston to drive the field for a field goal. But Dalton overthrew his star receiver and Cincinnati could not come up with a stop on Houston’s ensuing drive and the Texans just ran the clock out for a 19-13 victory.

It is the second straight year Cincinnati’s season ends with a wild-card loss in Houston and Marvin Lewis is now 0-4 in the postseason. I don’t expect him to be fired like several other NFL coaches were this season, but that kind of futility in the playoffs have led to more surprising firings in the past.