NFL Playoff Predictions: Home-Field Advantage Will Disappear in Divisional Round

The New Orleans Saints and Houston Texans took advantage of their home-field advantage in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs.

However, they didn't need any advantage the way they were playing.

Both teams have secured their opponents for next week as the Saints will travel to San Francisco to play the 49ers and the Texans will travel to Baltimore to play the Ravens.

Even though both teams are accustomed to playing in safety of their own domes, they're both good enough to overcome a road playoff game.

For Houston, things are extremely difficult because they're going to start a rookie quarterback against a ridiculous Baltimore defense.

But their defense is more than capable battling with Joe Flacco and they handled a Cincinnati team that gave Baltimore trouble twice this season. The Ravens won both games, but they didn't do so the way the Texans did.

As for New Orleans, there is no denying they're even more dangerous when playing in the Superdome, but Drew Brees and company are playing the best football in the league right now.

Traveling to San Francisco to take on a 49ers defense is a daunting task, but the 49ers are as fresh as fresh can be when it comes to postseason play. Stretching from rookie coach Jim Harbaugh, to quarterback Alex Smith, to middle linebacker Patrick Willis; the 49ers know little-to-nothing of the postseason.

There is only so much they can take away from the few postseason veterans they have on the roster.

Traveling to San Francisco won't faze the Saints.

We still don't know what to expect from Sunday's matchups, but we do know that the winner of the Giants-Falcons will travel to Green Bay and the winner of Pittsburgh-Denver will travel to New England.

In both matchups one team is much better-suited to handle a road trip than the other.

Both the Giants and Steelers have Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks while the Falcons and Broncos sport signal-callers looking for their first postseason wins.

When it comes down to it, if the Falcons and/or Broncos make it to the divisional round, the last thing they're going to worry about is what stadium they're in; handling their opponents is more than enough to worry about.

If it is the Giants and/or Steelers, it truly doesn't matter to them where they play because they've done it all before.

The divisional round of the playoffs will feature some great matchups but home-field advantage won't be much of a topic.