NFL Picks Week 16: Contenders Who Will Fold Under Pressure

These teams are sprinting out of the kitchen because they can't take the heat.

It is the time of year to separate the contenders from the pretenders, and that comes down to teams that can thrive in high pressure situations and teams that can't.

These teams cannot.

Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens do not handle adversity well. This team is good while playing with the lead and terrible when they fall behind.

Baltimore has one nice come from behind victory against the Arizona Cardinals, but other than that they have been playing almost exclusively from the lead when they win.

This team is going to meet adversity in the playoffs and they are not going to be able to handle it. Just take a look at their losses.

The Ravens have lost to the Titans (26-13), Jaguars (12-7), Seahawks (22-17) and Chargers (34-14).

Those are some ugly losses and they all have one thing in common: The Ravens started to panic when things didn't go their way early.

They begin to press on defense and leave themselves vulnerable to big plays. They also are way too quick to abandon the running game.

In their four losses, Ray Rice averaged just nine carries. In their 10 wins, he averaged 20.8 carries per game.

It is natural for a back to have more carries in a win, but the difference is not typically that big.

Making this discrepancy even more baffling and troubling is the fact that other than the Chargers game, the Ravens are not falling behind by such a wide margin that they have to give up on the run.

These tendencies are going to doom the Ravens' playoff run.

Houston Texans

The Texans had everything it took to be a legitimate Super Bowl contender. Then they lost their quarterback. Then they lost their backup quarterback. Now they are starting a rookie, TJ Yates, that was their fifth-round pick.

He is not going to be able to take the pressure. That is through no fault of Yates. There is a reason that no team has ever made the Super Bowl with a rookie as their starting QB. They are just prone to too many mistakes.

The Texans have the defense and they have the running game. They just don't have the passing game to survive through the playoffs.

Last week, the Texans ran for 150 yards at six yards a carry against the Panthers and out-gained Carolina in yards from scrimmage (358-316), but they lost 28-13 because TJ Yates couldn't help his team convert on third downs. They were just 2-for-9 and he threw two costly INTs. 

That puts too much pressure on a defense and it is no way to win playoff games.

Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys have turned buckling under pressure into an art form. This is a team that hasn't had a winning record in December since Tony Romo took over as the starting QB, and that is due to the fact that they keep finding ways to lose games late.

Their problems in these situations cannot be pinpointed to any one person. It is more just a head-scratching set of circumstances that finds them discovering ways to blow winnable games.

In their Week 13 loss against the Cardinals, their failure can be attributed to the worst display of timeout management you will ever see by a coach.

They followed that game up by blowing a late lead to the Giants, due to incredibly bad defense and Miles Austin losing a ball in the lights. 

This is a team that is destined to raise expectations with brilliant stretches of play, only to succumb to some sort of late game gaffe. While they may seem flukey, there is a long history of these mistakes.

Until the Cowboys prove otherwise, it is reckless to believe anything but heartbreak is in Dallas' future.