Who are the Houston Texans hosting in the NFL Playoffs?

By hook or by crook, the Houston Texans are your AFC South Champions. The Texans as a team did everything they needed to do to prove they were a playoff team, but few, ourselves included, believed they could win the AFC South. Especially when they kept pooching opportunities to take over first place in the division over the last few weeks.

But they did it. They won the AFC South and they'll be hosting a playoff game to start the postseason tournament. But who are the Texans going to face? Well, none other than the Cleveland Browns. The Browns secured their postseason spot last week with a win over the New York Jets, led by former Jets' quarterback Joe Flacco.

The Browns and Flacco will now venture to Houston to take on rookie phenom C.J. Stroud and the Texans in a game that carries a lot of history. The Texans and the Browns, of course, engaged in a monumental trade that landed the Browns' former Texans quarterback and all-around controversial figure Deshaun Watson.

Watson was of course accused of sexual misconduct an almost untold amount of times, leading to him missing 2021 as a whole, and then of course was suspended for the majority of 2022. When he has played, he hasn't played well and now the Browns are finding success with 38-year-old Flacco, whose best days were five or six seasons ago with the Baltimore Ravens.

That trade has forever linked the two teams and the worse the Browns do, the better it is for the Texans, as they own several more draft picks of theirs over the next few seasons. So it not only behooves the Texans to beat the Browns for the sake of advancing further into the playoffs to hopefully get to the Super Bowl, but to also make sure the Browns pick is earlier in the draft for the Texans.

It's rather ironic that this is the team the Texans have to face in the postseason, but their shared history will not spare them from getting the best the Texans have to give them.