After a brief 217 day absence, the Patriots play their first meaningful game since the Super Bowl this Sunday. Opening the year in Foxboro’s Gillette Stadium, they’ll be hosting a Bill O’Brien-led Texans team for the fifth time in the last four years, six if you include the 2017 preseason game and joint practices from that week.
Featuring an electric young quarterback in Deshaun Watson, the Texans are coming off of a lost year when seemingly their entire starting lineup was injured. They didn’t have a first or second round pick because of their last two quarterbacks, using the one to trade up for Watson and the two to dump Brock Osweiler’s awful contract.