Week 6 victory at Chiefs reason to believe again
The question is not whether the Texans can somehow beat Patrick Mahomes’ Chiefs at Kansas City in an AFC divisionalround game that Deshaun Watson’s team almost did not make.
The real question is much more simple than that.
Can the Texans beat the Chiefs again.
Forget 16-0 Buffalo and another wild-card halftime inside NRG Stadium preceded by ringing boos. Keep that season-changing image of a spinning, heroic Watson late during overtime Saturday in the middle of your mind.
Now go all the way back to Week 6.
Arrowhead Stadium. Andy Reid, Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce. The favored Chiefs leaping out to a 17-3 lead in a wild game that felt like it might be over before the
second quarter.
And then Bill O’Brien’s Texans got their act together, started playing aggressive, big-time football and refused to give in.
Watson was the better quarterback. O’Brien and offensive coordinator Tim Kelly kept attacking. Romeo Crennel’s defense limited high-powered Kansas City to just seven secondhalf points in a highly impressive victory that announced the 2019 Texans as an AFC dark-horse contender.
“It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to deal with all of the adversity, the ups and downs and the flows of the game, and to be able to keep fighting for 60 minutes,” said Watson after 31-24 Texans inside the Chiefs’ stadium. “That’s what we did. We never got discouraged. We kept
fighting, we kept pushing, we kept encouraging and that’s the biggest part about this locker room. Everyone is always fighting until the end, regardless of what the score is saying. We kind of don’t even look at the scoreboard.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Watson after 22-19 Texans over the Bills in OT Saturday: “That’s just me. I play the game. I don’t never look at the scoreboard. I just keep fighting.”
Look, I’m not declaring that the back-to-back AFC South champs are definitely going to upset Kansas City next Sunday and will soon be appearing in the first conference championship game in franchise history.
I will, however, professionally point out that:
• Among the four teams left in the playoffs in the AFC, two are proud members of the AFC South.
• There’s an actual chance that your Texans will be hosting the very familiar Tennessee Titans in an AFC Championship Game inside NRG Stadium.
• New England’s two-decade dynasty might finally be over, Tom Brady might have played his last game for the Patriots and Bill Belichick sounded like the grumpiest human being on the planet after 20-13 Titans on Saturday night. Tennessee also gave the Texans a divisional fist bump, allowing the South champs to avoid Lamar Jackson’s No. 1 seed Ravens at Baltimore in the next round.
• Watson will enter his next playoff game on the same level as Mahomes and, in some key ways, D4 is a better QB than the 2018 NFL MVP.
Doubt the 2019(20) Texans all you want. Scream that O’Brien should be fired when it’s 16-0 Buffalo and six years of maddening inconsistency is enough. Insist that the Texans just got lucky, Josh Allen and the Bills couldn’t finish, and Kansas City will end the road team’s season.
But the Texans have recorded the biggest wins of O’Brien’s coaching career this season. They have already overcome two of the premier defenses in the NFL (Bills, Patriots) and beat up the team that just ended New England’s season during Week 15 in a game that really mattered on the Titans’ field.
And the Texans — a resilient, gritty squad that often finds some way to victory with Watson leading the late charge — have already knocked off the Chiefs in a stadium that is supposed to belong to Showtime Mahomes.
“The world is against us. We just kind of keep fighting and everyone is going to be critics,” Watson said postgame Saturday before thanking Texans fans inside NRG that kept believing. “There’s going to be guys, people that are going to be on our
train, too. But at the same time, we’ve just got to worry about us in that locker room. Why not be great? How great do you want to be to be able to achieve the goal?”
If it takes falling behind 16-0 or 17-3 next Sunday, so be it.
Win ugly. Win messy. Win late in OT after almost blowing it at the end of regulation. Whatever it takes.
The only people that will truly believe the Texans are going to beat the Chiefs will be inside the Texans’ locker room.
If Watson, O’Brien and the Texans are going to pull this off, they should spend a long week remembering that they already won a game they weren’t supposed to this season at Kansas City. And now they’re just one huge win away from the AFC championship game.