For my money, the Patriots are the most overrated team left in the competition. They are a good team, and they are rightly favourites against the Texans, but I don’t see them as Super Bowl winners at all. Their record this season has been heavily boosted by the strength of their schedule.

The old saying is that ‘defense wins championships’ and while it may not get the Texans a Super Bowl win here, their incredible defense, which ranked second in DVOA in the regular season, is far superior to the Pats, who ranked 20th. The Pats have the offense to win this game, but give me the Texans with just over a touchdown in points, all day, every day. This will be close.

Finally, we’re going to finish off by backing Texans’ running back Woody Marks to find the endzone. The rookie has really outperformed his fourth-round drafting spot and has become a useful tool in this offense.

Marks has six touchdowns on the season, split equally between rushing and receiving, which shows his versatility. He is also full of confidence following the best performance of his career against the Steelers in the last round, rushing for 112 yards and a score.

When you really look into the Patriots defense, you can see that they’re better against the run than the pass, meaning that Stroud should continue his recent strong performances on Sunday night. He’s not become the superstar that we expected after his rookie season, but he is a strong game manager and can keep the team moving the chains down field.

We’re taking an alternate passing line on him here, lower than his 212.5 regular line, which I’m not overly confident on him covering. It feels like 175 passing yards is a low enough bar that he should be able to cover it, even with the added pressure of the playoffs. He’s exceeded this line in all but two games this season.

The Texans are here because of their defense, make no mistake, but I fancy them to hit their points total, for two reasons. Firstly, I think the Patriots defense are slightly overrated, as discussed above, as well as ranking 11 spots behind the Texans in defensive EPA per play. Crucially, we’ve seen CJ Stroud really develop as the season has progressed after a tricky start to the year.

For all the noise about defense, this Texans team just put 30 points on the Steelers in Wild Card Round. They’ve also managed to score 20 or more points in nine straight games up to this point. They’re more than capable of putting points on the board against this Patriots team.