The Christmas present to all fans from the NFL is a Christmas Day double header which gets underway in Houston as the Pittsburgh Steelers look to secure a bye in the first week of the play-offs. They take on a Houston Texans side who must be thinking what might have been.
A win for Pittsburgh will ensure they get the bye week in the postseason and would take the race for the number one seed down to the final week of the campaign. The Texans are playing purely for pride and Christmas cheer.
Houston Texans
This season will be looked at as one that got away from the Houston Texans. While they made an enormous cock up in starting Tom Savage to begin with they soon wised up to start Deshaun Watson only to see him go down for the season just when the Texans were beginning to look like the real deal. Throw in JJ Watt’s early season injury and if it wasn’t for bad luck the Texans would have had no luck at all.
Houston have stumbled badly since the injury to Watson and go into this match with a 4-10 record which includes four defeats on the trot. The worst trend of all is that those defeats are getting heavier. They could do with a couple of positive performances to take into the close season with them.
Pittsburgh Steelers
On the flip side to the Texans season the Steelers are enjoying a wonderful campaign even allowing for their defeat to the New England Patriots last week. That means that the number one seeding is out of their control but a win here would keep them in the hunt even if they would need the Patriots to slip up next week.
The Steelers offense has been the powerful machine we expect it to be these days but it was their defence prior to Ryan Shazier’s injury that was the talking point. They were ranked as one of the best in the league statistically although in the last two weeks without him they have been burned a couple of times which is a concern.
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Betting
Despite Antonio Brown being out for the Steelers I fancy we might see a few points in this match. The Texans defence has been burned a couple of times in recent weeks while the Steelers have shipped plenty of points since Shazier’s injury.
Perhaps the best thing for the potential of points is the injury to Tom Savage which means T J Yates will be under center for the Texans in this one. I see that as a positive and with both offenses set to have their own way I fancy we’ll see more than 45.5pts.
Tips
Back Over 45.5pts for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with Paddy Power
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