The Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans are starting the NFL playoffs with the AFC Wild Card game on Saturday and the matchup is live from ESPN/ABC at 4:20 pm ET. The game is from NRG Stadium and comes ahead of the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers game on Saturday night.
The Chiefs come into the game as a wild card team, while the Texans are coming into the playoffs as the AFC South division winners. The Texans are hosting the game and both teams come in on winning streaks. The Texans have won three in a row, while the Chiefs have won 10 games in a row coming into the playoffs and are the hottest team in football.
These teams are evenly matched, as both have strong defensive units that have been playing very well over the second half of the season. Alex Smith may give the Chiefs the advantage at quarterback, while the Texans have the advantage with Deandre Hopkins coming in after a career season. The Chiefs defense has been playing at a high level and players like Justin Houston and Marcus Peters will be key if the team wants to win on Saturday.
These two teams have played already this season with the Chiefs winning in September, but these two teams look very different now. Jamaal Charles was lost during the season for the Chiefs and Arian Foster was out for that game and eventually went down for the Texans. The Chiefs have Charcandrick West coming in as the leading rusher this season with 634 yards, while Alfred Blue has had nearly 700 for the Texans.
Alex Smith has had another solid season with 3486 yards and 20 touchdowns, while Brian Hoyer has returned from a concussion and has put up 19 TDs and seven picks this season. Jeremy Maclin had a strong year for the Chiefs with 87 catches for 1088 yards and eight TDs, while Deandre Hopkins had a massive year for the Texans with 111 catches for 1521 yards and 11 touchdowns. The Chiefs come into the playoffs on a long winning streak and at one point this season it looked like they would be last in their division and unlikely they would even make it to .500 at all.
The Texans had some struggles as well and they were 2-5 at one point in the season before turning things around and now they could make it into the divisional round with a win here. The Chiefs and Texans both play strong defense and that gives both teams a chance to get things done for Wild Card weekend.