As the Bears walk through their hiring processesgeneral manager, passing-game coordinatorQB coachthe NFL has some business to do this weekend. The games dont involve the Bears but there is rarely a game played somewhere that doesnt have something of interest for the Bears.
Besides, theyre worth analyzing, too. The home teams won all four of the wild-card games and all four will win the divisional games as well (this isnt home-field-advantage thing, incidentallyteams have home games because they have better records because they actually are better):
Houston Texans at Baltimore Ravens (Sun. noon)
Rookie quarterback against Ray Lewis and a Baltimore team that hasnt lost at home all year (10 straight back to last year) and hasnt ever lost to Houston.
The Texans are an underplayed success story with T.J. Yates doing what hes done after the injuries to Matt Schaub and Matt Leinart. And they have an elite tailback (Arian Foster) and wideout (Andre Johnson), two of the three legs that great offenses rest on.
But the Ravens with Ray Rice get as much production out of their running back as the Texans do and Baltimore throttled Foster when the teams met this season.
Joe Flacco has his detractors. He also had road playoff wins his first three NFL seasons and this is a home game. If Houston steals this one, it will be a bigger upset than Denver over New England. Neither of those will happen:
NFL
Baltimore, 27 Houston, 14