A BALANCING ACT
How Texans balance health, readiness, and new blood in finale
Jan 3, 2025, 2:02 pm
Will the Texans get Diontae Johnson involved in the offense? Photo by Maddie Malhotra/Getty Images.
Houston coach DeMeco Ryans is balancing the need to keep his Texans healthy for their AFC wild-card playoff game against the desire to knock off rust after a long break leading into Sunday's regular-season finale.
A little good mojo certainly would help going into the postseason. The Texans also have lost two straight since clinching a second straight AFC South title.
Houston (9-7) is in the midst of an 11-day break since being embarrassed 31-2 by Baltimore on Christmas Day. Beating the Tennessee Titans on Sunday would help the Texans work on some issues before they host a wild-card game as the No. 4 seed. Ryans says he’s planning to play his starters, though he wouldn't say for how long.
“We’ll see how the game goes,” Ryans said.
The Titans (3-13) are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Playoff hopes officially ended Dec. 8 with a loss to Jacksonville, and Tennessee has lost five straight. The Titans currently are set to receive the No. 2 pick in the NFL draft next April. A loss combined with a win by New England over Buffalo would put Tennessee at No. 1 overall for the first time since 2016.
First-year coach Brian Callahan is busy trying to help his team improve and hasn't thought about the idea of a lottery keeping NFL teams from tanking for better draft spots. He called it an interesting question that would be better addressed in the offseason. Two-time Pro Bowl defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons said his job is trying to win games.
“I’m not going out there with a lose mentality for the draft,” Simmons said. “That’s out of my control and what we do and who we go get in the draft.”
Musical quarterbacks
The Titans benched second-year quarterback Will Levis after his four turnovers led to 24 points in a loss to Cincinnati on Dec. 15. Veteran Mason Rudolph started the last two games, yet he couldn't help Tennessee snap a skid that is now seven of eight, including a 20-13 loss last week in Jacksonville.
The lone win? Levis started a 33-27 victory on Nov. 24 at Houston, which gives the Titans at least the chance to sweep the Texans. Combined with how Levis has handled himself since being pulled, he earned another chance to play in what might be his 12th start and last chance to stop turning the ball over before Tennessee decides this offseason what to do at quarterback. Callahan plans to announce his starter late this week.
Levis is just happy for another chance and for his last pass at Nissan Stadium not to be a pick-6.
“All I'm trying to do is play quarterback the best that I can, and it's a good opportunity to try to end the season on a good note," Levis said.
New face
Receiver Diontae Johnson is expected to make his debut for Houston Sunday after being picked up last week following his release by the Ravens. The Texans needed depth at the position after Tank Dell followed Stefon Diggs to the injured list with his season-ending knee injury on Dec. 21.
Johnson played four games for Baltimore after a trade from Carolina before being suspended for refusing to enter a game and then being released on Dec. 20. He has 4,726 yards receiving in a six-year career that started in Pittsburgh. Ryans isn’t worried about his history.
“As I mentioned to him, of course it’s a clean slate starting with me,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter what has happened in the past or what the narrative is about you. You come here and everything is a fresh start and so we’ll see how he can help us, what he can add to our team on the field and off the field.”
Oilers throwbacks
The Titans have planned all season to wear their Oilers throwback uniforms Sunday against the team that replaced them in Houston. The throwbacks feature the light blue and red that the Texans have incorporated into their color scheme with Houston fans unhappy that the late Bud Adams took everything connected to the Oilers and their history with him to Tennessee in 1997.
Simmons can’t wait to play in the throwbacks and wants to represent the former players who wore those uniforms for the franchise. He also knows the Texans would love nothing more than to hand the Titans a loss while wearing those uniforms.
“It’s been a bumpy season and being able to close this year out in them uniforms I think, you know, it’ll be a better way to go out,” Simmons said.
It’s been an excellent weeklong stretch of games for the Astros tempered by the news of yet another season-ending injury to a starting pitcher. To get the bad news out of the way, it comes as no surprise that Ronel Blanco needs Tommy John surgery and is done until at least the middle of next season. While Blanco had not been nearly as good through nine 2025 starts as he was last season, he was still taking his regular return and on average getting into the sixth inning. Blanco turns 32 years old at the end of August. He’s not even salary arbitration-eligible until 2027. That last fact may be good news for him. The Astros will likely keep Blanco next year in hopes he can contribute in the second half of the season, since they will pay him barely the Major League minimum salary ($780,000 next year) That’s in contrast to Jose Urquidy, who in the midst of his salary arbitration years would have cost about three and a half million dollars to keep, so the Astros non-tendered him.
With Blanco joining Hayden Wesneski in the “See you next year! Hopefully.” club, it struck me as interesting that the Astros let Lance McCullers throw 102 pitches in his Wednesday outing vs. the Athletics. That’s eleven more than he had thrown in any of his prior four starts. McCullers holding up physically would be a huge boost, but the new essentials in the Astros’ rotation are Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown. Framber has settled in to the tune of a 1.93 earned run average over his last four starts. Brown’s season ERA is 2.00. Brown has had five days of rest before all eleven of his starts this season. This Sunday is Brown’s presently next scheduled outing. He would work on four days of rest if on the mound Sunday against the Rays.
Taking the last two games from the Mariners was huge (for the second half of May anyway). Keeping the good times rolling by sweeping the two-game miniseries from the A’s was less significant but still nice. Maybe not quite nice enough to have Frank “The Tank” from the movie Old School belting out “We’re going streaking!!!” but it did give the Astros their first four game winning streak of the season. They still have not lost more than three straight.
On a heater!
Speaking of streaking, time for annual mention of one of my all-time favorite baseball factoids. The 1916 New York Giants hold the MLB record for the longest win streak with an incredible 26 in a row. Earlier in the season the Giants ripped off 17 in a row. Combine the two streaks and that’s 43-0! The 1916 New York Giants finished in fourth place. In all their other games the Giants went 43-66. The American League’s longest ever winning streak is of fairly recent vintage. The 2007 Cleveland Indians won 22 straight. There have been only two other winning streaks since 1900 of at least 20 games. The 1935 Chicago Cubs won 21 straight. The Art Howe-managed 2002 Oakland A’s won 20 in a row, and were the inspiration for the movie Moneyball. The Astros have three 12 game winning streaks as the longest in their history.
Expect the unexpected
Tuesday’s win over the A’s brought the Astros to the one-third completed point of the regular season. Isaac Paredes was definitely their best offensive player to that milepost. His “on pace for” numbers were the best on the ballclub 33 home runs and 93 runs batted in. Paredes also led in runs scored with 29. The last Astro to lead the team in all three of those categories was Alex Bregman who did it in both 2018 and 2019. That Bregman was clearly a better player than this Paredes, but Isaac healthy and making “only” 6.625 million dollars this season is a heck of a lot better value than Bregman at 40 mil for the Red Sox, especially given that while Bregman was off to a sensational start for Boston, he’s now out for at least a month with a quad injury.
Hunter Brown is on pace to win 20 games. The last Astro to get there was Gerrit Cole on the last day of the 2019 regular season. The day before that Justin Verlander won his 21st game.
The Cleveland Guardians’ bullpen was awesome last season, by far the best in the league with four relievers who each pitched in at least 74 games posting ERAs of 1.92 or lower, headlined by closer Emmanuel Clase’s microscopic 0.61. One-third of the way through this season for the Astros: Bryan Abreu sat at 1.90, Steven Okert 1.82, Josh Hader 1.57, Bryan King 1.52.
For Astro-centric conversation, join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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