Crazy enough to work?

The New England Patriots are underdogs Sunday.

That's when the defending AFC champions and current AFC East title winners – like they had any competition – will face the Houston Texans in the conference divisional playoffs.

The game is in Foxboro, where the Pats arm-burned the boys from Houston, then considered by many to be a Super Bowl favorite, 42-14 a little more than a month ago on Monday Night Football.

Yeah, I know you just checked the Vegas line, and the Patriots, with their smarter than Einstein head coach and pretty boy quarterback, are 9-and-a-half point favorites.

So now you're perplexed why I say the Pats are the dogs in the playoff game.

It's all psychological, bro.

Sitting alone in my car trying to nap today on my lunch break, I was listening to Teddy Bruschi chatting with Colin Cowherd about the upcoming game. Both acknowledge the Vegas line, but Bruschi said something interesting.

He mentioned that football players, understandably, like to be the underdogs. They thrive on the notion that everyone is counting them out, thus giving them more incentive to prove wrong their naysayers.

Remember the Jets did this a couple of years back, smiting the Patriots in a playoff game in Foxboro not long after suffering an embarrassing defeat to New Englanders weeks before on the same field.

Bruschi and Cowherd were talking up this underdog, us-against-the-efin-world philosophy, giving it merit.

They're right. Houston will go into the game feeling dogged and underrated, looking for revenge.

But it's not going to happen. Not this time. Patriots' coach Bill Belichick learned his lesson against Rex Ryan and his mouthy Jets.

I see the HC of the NEP turning this around, using this philosophy, a reverse psychology or sorts, to make his players feel as if they are the underdogs because Houston is coming in vengeance on their minds.

The Texans are coming in to take care of business and there's no way in a place hotter than Houston they feel they can be stopped, Belichick might effectively communicate to his troops.

Thus, creating a no-one-feels-we-can hold-off-the-ragging-Texans underdog attitude.

Think I'm crazy.

The Patriots will win, and they'll win convincingly. Houston will look like Notre Dame trying to figure out how to beat an SEC team.