The NFL Divisional Round is here. Starting tomorrow, eight NFL teams will duke it out for their chance to play in their respective conference’s championship game. With parity at an all-time high in the NFL, it’s truly anyone’s game with three weeks to play.

Every week this year, I’ve gone through and asked one big question for every NFL game. There are only four this week, but that doesn’t mean the trend has to stop now.

Here’s one big question I want to see answered in every NFL Divisional Round game.

Bills at Broncos

Can the Bills protect Josh Allen?

Josh Allen is superhuman. He can do things that no other quarterback in the league can do. For years, he’s overachieved with the team he has around him, because he’s just that dang good in the playoffs. In 14 games, Allen has thrown for 3,632 yards, rushed for 714 and totaled 35 touchdowns. Over a 17-game season, that would equate to 4,410 passing yards, 867 rushing yards and 43 touchdowns. He ranks first all-time in offensive yards per game, total touchdowns per game, TD:INT ratio and INT percentage in the playoffs.

We’ve seen Allen work wonders with this team, which doesn’t really have any weapons outside of James Cook. He just went into Jacksonville and put the team on his back and won, but now he has to face one of the best defenses in the league in Denver.

My big question is, can the Bills protect him? The Broncos have one of the best pass rushes we’ve ever seen, and if the Bills can’t give him time to throw, they’ll have next to no chance in this game. Allen doesn’t have receivers that can win immediately off the line of scrimmage, so he’s going to need some time to survey the field and find the open man, or scramble.

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It will be up to Buffalo’s offensive line to protect him. They will be the X-factors in this game.

49ers at Seahawks

Will San Fran’s injuries finally come back to bite them?

Everyone knows by now that the San Francisco 49ers are banged up. They’ve lost a ton of players, including Nick Bosa, Fred Warner and George Kittle to injury, and now they have to go to Seattle to face their NFC West foes, the Seattle Seahawks. It’s going to be an extremely tough matchup, and my question is, will their injuries finally catch up to them?

The 49ers have continued to roll without a lot of their starters, but it hasn’t been easy. They’ve had to grind games out and count on Brock Purdy to make a lot of plays late to win them ball games. Just last week, Purdy had to lead them on a game-winning drive in the fourth quarter against the Eagles, and the Seahawks are a much better team than Philly.

This is the same Seahawks team that held the 49ers to three points, and that was when they had George Kittlehealthy. Now he’s out, and their only real weapons are Christian McCaffrey and Jauan Jennings. I expect them to score more than three points, but probably not a whole lot more.

And that wouldn’t be a huge problem if San Fran’s defense wasn’t super banged up. Without Bosa, they have been unable to get consistent pressure on the quarterback, which means their defensive backs have to stick to Seattle’s receivers longer, and no one has been able to slow down Jaxon Smith-Njigba yet.

There’s a lot to be concerned about with the 49ers this week. We’ll see if they can once again overcome all their injuries.

Texans at Patriots

Which defense reigns supreme?

The Houston Texans and New England Patriots game is going to be a lot of fun. If you like defensive football, you’re going to love this game. Both defenses looked dominant in the Wild Card round, but both of their offenses were a bit shaky. So, in my mind, this game comes down to which defense reigns supreme.

On paper, it should be Houston’s. They have the best defense we’ve seen in years, and what they did to the Pittsburgh Steelers last week was borderline assault. They made Aaron Rodgers look like a fool in what was potentially his last game, and they held the Steelers to their lowest yardage total in a playoff game since their very first postseason appearance. But you have to take New England’s offense being much better than Houston’s into account.

New England’s defense is worse than Houston’s, but it is still very, very good, and it was on full display last week. They held the Chargers to just three points and made Justin Herbert look like a middle schooler. They logged 30 pressures and six sacks, and they just completely shut down everything the Chargers wanted to do offensively. Houston should provide more of a challenge, but not by much.

I think whoever reaches 20 points first is going to win this game. And honestly, there’s a real chance neither of them hit that mark.

Rams at Bears

How much of an impact does the weather have on this game?

The weather is going to play a massive factor in this game. It’s going to be cold and windy, and there’s even a chance of snow. There’s been a lot of talk this week about Matthew Stafford’s play in the cold, which has actually been pretty good, but once precipitation gets involved, his numbers drop drastically. So, how big of an impact will the weather actually have?

If it’s just cold, I don’t think it’ll play that big of a role. The Bears are used to sub-freezing temperatures, and while the Rams aren’t, Stafford has still been very good in cold-weather games, throwing for 1,519 yards, 15 touchdowns and three interceptions in six games.

If it snows, though, that’s a different story. When it snows/rains, Stafford is 1-9 with 16 touchdowns and 11 picks. However, it’s important to mention that he threw for 300+ yards and two touchdowns with no turnovers in last year’s playoff loss to Philadelphia, when it snowed multiple inches.

The weather in Chicago is always a bit iffy, especially at this time of the year. Will it play as big of a role as we all think? Or will it be a non-factor? We won’t find out until Sunday night, but it should be a very entertaining game.