Heroic Deshaun Watson Should Scare the AFC

If the rest of this season's NFL playoffs are anything like the first game, this postseason will be talked about for years. Saturday's overtime thriller between the Buffalo Bills and Houston Texans featured a bit of everything, including something that's become all too familiar to Texans fans in the playoffs: Houston dug itself into a hole early.

The Texans mounted the biggest comeback of the Bill O'Brien era, though, eking out a 22-19 win at NRG Stadium and moving to the divisional round. The team did so because of a much more pleasant familiarity for Houston fans—and something that should send a shiver down the spine of every other team on the AFC side of the bracket.

Simply put, Houston won because Deshaun Watson stood on his head and willed the Texans to victory. And when he straps on that cape and goes into Super Saiyan mode, he's all but impossible to stop.

Eric Christian Smith/Associated Press

For most of the first three quarters Saturday afternoon, it didn't look like there would be any heroics from Watson—or anyone else with a bull on his hat. Just as they were last year at home in the Wild Card Round against the Indianapolis Colts, the Texans were outplayed by the Buffalo Bills in every way. Whether it was Buffalo's march down the field on the game's first drive or two Texans trips into Bills territory in the first quarter that resulted in zero points, the first half was all visitors.

Facing near-constant pressure in the opening half, Watson completed six of eight passes for a whopping 49 yards. Houston couldn't get anything going offensively. When Stephen Hauschka hit from 38 yards out with 6:02 left in the third quarter to make it 16-0, it looked like Watson was headed for more playoff heartbreak after a moribund performance a year ago in his postseason debut.

Then he stepped into the proverbial phone booth—and da-da-da-da!

After being invisible to that point, Watson found star wideout DeAndre Hopkins for a 14-yard completion on the ensuing possession that got the Texans going offensively. Then he found Hopkins again for 10 more yards. Then, from the edge of the red zone, Watson called his own number and got Houston on the board, scrambling for a 20-yard score.

After tacking on a two-point conversion, Watson and the Texans were in business.

Houston turned a Josh Allen fumble into a field goal and then a Bills punt. Watson got the ball back and again went on the march—74 yards in eight plays, highlighted by a 41-yard bomb from Watson to Hopkins.

When Watson accounted for his second score of the night on a short pass to tailback Carlos Hyde and then converted yet another two-point try (this time through the air to Hopkins), the Texans had turned a 16-0 deficit into a 19-16 lead.

Watson wasn't done.

After Buffalo tied the game at the end of regulation on a 47-yard Hauschka field goal (the last two minutes of that game had to be seen to be believed) and things went to overtime, Watson turned the hero-meter up to 11.

Facing a 2nd-and-6 from just inside the Buffalo 45, Watson found himself about to be the filling in a Bills sandwich. But as it turns out, the quarterback doesn't like sandwiches. He somehow managed to stay on his feet and found tailback Taiwan Jones for a 34-yard catch-and-run that set up the game-deciding kick from Ka'imi Fairbairn, a 28-yarder.

"I just told myself to stay up," Watson told ESPN's Lisa Salters about avoiding the sack. "It's do or die right now, and all that work I put in in the offseason, I just had to make a play. Somebody had to be great—why not me?"

Why not him, indeed.

That most improbable of plays capped the most improbable of comebacks. In addition to being the first time an O'Brien-led Texans team ever came back from a 16-point deficit, it was the first time since the 2014 NFC Championship Game that a team erased a deficit that big at home in the postseason, per ESPN Stats & Info. It was also the first time Houston won a postseason game it trailed at intermission.

There were also personal achievements for Watson, who finished the game with 302 combined passing and rushing yards and two touchdowns. It was his first win in seven tries in games in which he fell behind by 16 or more points. And Watson is the only starting signal-caller in the last 15 postseasons with a 14-point comeback win in the NFL and college (having led Clemson over Alabama in the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship Game).

Just call him Captain, well, you know.

It was a reminder that for all their flaws, the Texans also have something that not every playoff team can boast: a bona fide superstar quarterback. A player with "it"—the ability to put an entire team on his back and carry his squad to victory.

Eric Christian Smith/Associated Press

He did what Seattle's Russell Wilson did in that January 2015 NFC title tilt with the Packers. What Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady have done in the past. What we think Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson are capable of doing.

Where Watson is concerned, we don't have to wonder anymore. And he did it against a Bills defense that sacked him seven times. Over the last 10 years, again per ESPN Stats & Info, starting quarterbacks were 1-117 when taking six-plus sacks and falling behind by 16 or more points in the same contest.

One-and-117.

Make no mistake: The Texans will be clear underdogs in the divisional round, no matter where they play. That the same Houston team that stunned the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead in October got mudstomped 41-7 about a month later in Baltimore tells you all you need to know about the rollercoaster that was the 2019 regular season for the Texans.

But that Texans team that got trashed by the Ravens didn't have defensive end J.J. Watt, who was back on the field against the Bills on Saturday. Watt joins Hopkins and Watson in the rarefied air occupied by players who have that most special of abilities. You can scheme them perfectly. Do everything right. And they can elevate their games to a level where it doesn't matter even a little.

They can go Super Saiyan.

And when Watson gets his Goku on, the Texans can beat any team in the AFC.