Who should the Patriots want to face in the divisional round: Dolphins, Texans or Raiders?
Let's see what the statistics have to say.
COMMENTARYThe New England Patriots will have to wait a couple more days to find out who they will play in the divisional round next weekend. There are three teams who they can possibly face: the Miami Dolphins, Oakland Raiders and Houston Texans. They will play the winner of the Oakland-Houston game unless Miami upsets the Pittsburgh Steelers, in which case they would then play Miami. Of the three, who should the Patriots want to play? When you turn to statistics, the answer becomes pretty clear.Let’s start with some traditional statistics, like point differential — the difference between points scored and points allowed.
Source: ESPN & Pro-Football-Reference
As you can see, the Patriots fared far better than all three of their potential divisional-round opponents. In fact, the only AFC teams who had a worse point differential than the Dolphins and Texans were the lowly Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Jets and Cleveland Browns, who as a trio combined for just eight wins.
Let’s break this down a little further, and look at yards and points allowed per game.
Source: ESPN & Pro-Football-Reference
We can see some trends appear here. Again, we note that the Patriots stack up very favorably against all three potential opponents. Oakland’s offense is close to New England’s equal, but without starting quarterback Derek Carr, those statistics aren’t likely to hold up. Carr was a frontrunner for the NFL MVP until he got hurt in Week 15. Now, the Raiders are set to make Connor Cook the first QB in the Super Bowl era to make his first career start in a playoff game.
The same is true to a lesser extent for the Dolphins, if they continue to be without first-string QB Ryan Tannehill. With Tannehill out with a knee injury, Miami has turned to backup Matt Moore, who is serviceable, but also a backup for a reason.
Houston’s QB situation is unsettled for a different reason: They don’t have a good one. No matter if they ride with Brock Osweiler or Tom Savage under center, they probably will have a hard time moving the ball.
On the defensive side, it’s a matter of which stat you prefer. Do you prefer to look at yards allowed per game, or points? If it’s points, New England comes out on top, while Houston comes out on top in terms of yards per game.
Part of the reason why Houston ranks better in yards allowed than points allowed could stem from a trio of wonky games in which the Texans allowed far fewer yards than one would expect given the amount of points they allowed. For instance, in their 27-0 loss to the Patriots, they only allowed 282 yards (the average yards and points allowed per game in the NFL this season was 22.8 and 350.4, respectively). Perhaps more striking, they only allowed 150 yards in a 21-20 win over the Jaguars. Generally speaking, you’d think it hard to allow 20 points when you only allow 150 yards, but Houston managed it thanks to a couple of drives that started deep in their territory following interceptions thrown by Osweiler. Finally, they allowed 24 points to the Tennessee Titans in a game in which they allowed just 236 yards.
Still, defense is just about the only thing Houston does well. Football Outsiders tracks all three phases of the game — offense, defense and special teams — using their proprietary system called defense-adjusted value over average, or DVOA. They also have two all-encompassing total statistics, one for the season as a whole (overall), and one that weights games toward the end of the season more, to give a more accurate gauge of how teams are playing as playoff time nears (weighted). Let’s see how each team ranks via these metrics.
Source: Football Outsiders
Once again, the Pats come out ahead in offense and special teams, and better than the Dolphins and Raiders on defense. Strikingly, the Texans fare just as poorly in special teams as they do on offense. What’s also interesting from this table is that we see that none of the potential opponents are faring much better now than they did for the season on the whole. In other words, no potential opponent is coming into the postseason overly “hot.”
When you consider all the factors here, it seems obvious that the Patriots should want to face the Texans in the divisional round. All three teams are having QB troubles, but beyond their QB troubles, the Dolphins and Raiders have proven competent in all phases of the game, whereas the Texans are abysmal at everything except defense. And given that Houston allowed 27 points to a Patriots offense helmed by Jacoby Brissett in his first-ever start, then the team should be pretty comfortable with that strength-on-strength battle with Tom Brady under center.
The Patriots probably don’t need to sweat any of their three divisional-round opponents, but the easiest foe on the menu is likely going to be the Houston Texans.
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