It’s a dangerous thing, momentum. And the Houston Texans have loads of it.

Kansas City Chiefs v Pittsburgh Steelers | Justin K. Aller/GettyImages

After three weeks of rest, relaxation and recovery, it’s playoff time in Kansas City.

The Kansas City Chiefs are gearing up for their Divisional Round clash against the Houston Texans on Saturday afternoon, the team’s first step on its quest for a historic three-peat. But as the game nears closer, I must admit there’s something that has me feeling nervous.

It isn’t the time off or the metaphoric “rust” that could come with more than three weeks between competitive games. Rather, a particular intangible—one that has the power to swing football games and shatter dreams in mere minutes— has me feeling a little more than a little anxious.

Momentum.

Every sport fan in the world knows its power. A team that carries it can seem unstoppable, while an opponent’s best efforts to counteract it feel futile. It’s a dangerous thing, momentum. And the Houston Texans have loads of it.

Houston’s new-found momentum

To say that the Texans have loads of momentum feels like a strange thing to say given the way Houston’s season ended. After winning the AFC’s least competitive division and an uninspiring end to the regular season, it felt like the Texans were just making up the numbers in the playoffs.

That sentiment seemed accurate on Wild Card weekend until everything changed. Interceptions on back-to-back drives by the Chargers—including one pick-six that swung the tide the Texans way, the second half became a Houston whitewash.

After fans and pundits– including, most notably, Rex Ryan – wrote the Texans off, they’d gone out and won a playoff game by three scores.

The Texans will be up and about coming into Arrowhead, and a confident team is a dangerous one. That has me feeling edgy. Could momentum come into play against the Chiefs? We saw it bite Minnesota on Monday night.

Momentum is already a thing this winter

Hiccups and red zone miscues against Detroit cost the Vikings the NFC’s one seed, and a week later, the mistakes and the misfires continued and in the blink of an eye, Minnesota’s season was over.

The inverse happened in the college football playoff, too. Oregon ran into a buzzsaw in Ohio State, a team that was running at max speed following an emphatic, blow-off-the-cobwebs win over Tennessee.

Oregon never got rolling against a firing Buckeye team that simply picked up where it left off a week earlier. The contest was over before the Ducks even knew what hit them.

The ghosts of Chiefs playoff disasters past are full of negative momentum swings as well. There was Andrew Luck and the Colts, who pulled off the NFL’s second-largest postseason comeback win ever, and the disastrous second half of the AFC Championship against Cincinnati.

What to expect vs. Texans

So, could the something similar happen against the Chiefs on Saturday? Could a confident Texans team get the jump on a Kansas City side that will have to get itself rolling again after three weeks off? I mean, it’s possible, right?

I know I shouldn’t be nervous. The Chiefs are back-to-back Super Bowl champions and haven’t lost a playoff game in over 1,000 days, which itself carries a boat load of momentum.

Kansas City has done this all before, and they’ve faced—and defeated—plenty of teams that have had momentum of their own. The Chiefs are well a well-coached, well-seasoned, playoff team, so they have all the experience to be able to come in fully prepared.

And yet, here I am, feeling nervous and writing about it as if to try and speak some form of confidence into existence. If only there was something that could help erase those doubts.

You know, maybe something like a recent playoff game in the Divisional Round against Houston at Arrowhead. A game where the Texans had a blistering start, and that mighty beast called “momentum” was completely on their side with maybe the score blown out to something crazy like 24-0 in the second quarter or something.

If only, from that seemingly hopeless position, the Chiefs had been able to mount one of the most insane comebacks in the history of football, outscoring Houston 51-7 for the rest of the game to win, launching Kansas City all the way to a historic Super Bowl victory.

Something like would go a long way to soothing my nerves, I reckon. If only it had happened before.

WHAT A COMEBACK. 🏈

Every Chiefs point scored in the 2019 Divisional Playoff 51-31 win vs. the Texans.

(🎥 NFL, CBS) pic.twitter.com/m7JGP39bx2

— Sunday Night Football on NBC (@SNFonNBC) December 20, 2024