SO CLOSE!
Examining the intricate playoff landscape for the Houston Texans
Dec 23, 2023, 10:45 am
Can the Texans make the playoffs in DeMeco Ryans' first season as head coach? Photo by Getty Images.
Back in the 1950s, NFL Commissioner Bert Bell said his goal for the league was parity and “on any given Sunday, any team could beat any other team.”
Bell’s quote was turned into a football movie, Any Given Sunday starring Al Pacino in1999. True to form, the film broke even at the box office.
Fast forward, while it’s not an absolute must-win game, it’s a “given” that the Houston Texans should give serious thought to defeating the 9-5 Cleveland Browns on Sunday at NRG Stadium.
With just three games remaining, Commissioner Bell would smile at the AFC standings with three teams bunched on top with 8-6 marks: Jaguars, Colts and Texans. Their records may be even but they’re not equal.
As things stand today, because of an intricate tiebreaker system that would have Albert Einstein switching his major to phys ed, the Jags have a 76-percent chance of making the playoffs, the Colts are 64-percent likely to play in the post-season, and the Texans are at 52-percent for the playoffs.
Talk about parity (with a boost from the NFL’s expanded playoff system started in 2020), with only three weeks left in the season, only three of the AFC’s 16 teams are eliminated from the post-season: Jets, Titans and Patriots.
Vegas oddsmakers have been in a tizzy over the Texans-Browns game. The opening line had the Texans favored by 2-1/2 points. Heading into the weekend, the Browns now are the betting choice by 3 points, a wild 5-1/2 point swing. Of course, it was assumed that Texans rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud would escape concussion protocol and play against the Browns. That doesn’t appear the case as Case Keenum (or Casey Keenum as one Houston news anchor calls him) will be behind center for the Texans.
Keenum led the Texans to a last-minute victory over the Tennessee Titans (cosplay Houston Oilers) last week. So it’s not like the Texans are in desperate straits at quarterback.
Playing quarterback has been hazardous duty in the AFC this season. All three leaders in the AFC probably will start understudy quarterbacks on Sunday. C.J. Beathard likely will replace Trevor Lawrence who’s in concussion protocol for the Jaguars. Gardner Minshew replaced Colts starter Anthony Richardson early this season and has hung onto the job.
As Ron Popeil used to say, wait there’s more. Veteran Joe Flacco has risen from the scrap heap and will quarterback the Browns against the Texans on Sunday. Like Keenum, Flacco led his team to a narrow win last week. But Flacco had three interceptions against the Bears, while Keenum threw only one pass to the other team last week.
Seven teams in the AFC will qualify for the playoffs. Right now, the Texans are No. 8, on the outside looking in. The Jaguars are the No. 4 seed, the Colts are No. 7. The Texans still have a better than even shot at the post-season with their final two games against the Titans and Colts.
If they lose Sunday to the Browns, the Texans’ playoff chances drop to 23 percent and as Scarlett O’Hara would say, they’ll have to depend on the kindness of strangers to make the post-season.
But if the Texans win Sunday, it will lock up a winning season for the Texans. Their pre-season win total was just 5.5 games.
If the Texans win out, they will match their total wins for the past three seasons … combined. And DeMeco Ryans might start making room for his Coach of the Year trophy.
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When DeMeco Ryans became coach of the Houston Texans before last season, the two-time Pro Bowl linebacker brought his swarm defense with him.
It’s an identity the Texans have embraced as they prepare for their second straight trip to the divisional round of the playoffs Saturday where they’ll face the Kansas City Chiefs.
“You really can’t go out there if you’re not about it,” Ryans said.
And while every member of the defense has bought into Ryans’ aggressive style, there is one player who epitomizes it like no one else.
“Will every time,” cornerback Derek Stingley said of defensive end Will Anderson Jr.
Anderson, last year’s AP Defensive Rookie of the Year, has taken his game to another level this season and had 1½ sacks last week after piling up 11 in the regular season.
He described what playing swarm defense means to him.
“Do whatever it takes to get the ball, attacking the ball,” Anderson said. “We’ve got this saying in our D-line room; ‘who gonna pop it off?’ Whoever pops it off first, that’s swarming. Like who’s gonna make the big play? And I feel like there’s a lot of guys on defense that pop it off, who swarm.”
The Texans intercepted Justin Herbert a career-high four times, including one which was returned for a score, in last week’s win over the Chargers after he had been picked off just three times all season. Houston’s four takeaways in the first week of the playoffs are tied with Philadelphia for most in the NFL.
That performance came after Houston ranked fifth in the league in the regular season by forcing 29 turnovers.
Stingley, who had two of the interceptions last week a day after earning AP All-Pro honors, shared his mindset on the team’s defensive mentality.
“It really just comes down to if I was to tell you this is the last time you’re gonna do something, how you gonna do it,” Stingley said. “It’s simple as that. Just do that every single play.”
Ryans said there’s really no secret to why his team has such a knack for forcing turnovers. He believes it’s because he has good players, and they emphasize it in practice which translates to games.
“That’s our main thing that we go into every week is talking about attacking the football, taking the football,” Ryans said. “Because we know, when you take the football away, it just raises your percentages of winning the football games… it’s the defense helping the team win the game.”
While all of Houston’s takeaways last week came on interceptions, Stingley was quick to point out that those picks wouldn’t have happened if not for the pressure the defensive line put on Herbert. The Texans sacked him four times and hit him another nine in the 32-12 victory.
“The defense starts with them up front,” Stingley said. “They’re doing their job and it just makes it easier for us on the back end.”
Anderson said with each turnover, the defense got more and more amped up and was pushing each other to see who the next player would be to force one.
“That’s just that swarm mentality and we just feeding off each other,” Anderson said. “This person can’t do it by themselves so who is gonna be next and that just generates that contagious energy.”
The Texans were the fifth team since 1963 to have at least four sacks, four interceptions and an interception return for a touchdown in a playoff game last week. The past three teams to do it all went on to win the Super Bowl, with Tampa Bay doing so in the 2002 season, Baltimore in 2000 and San Francisco in 1989.
This Texans team would love to keep that going. But first they’ll need a win Saturday to put them in the AFC championship game for the first time after losing their previous five divisional matchups.
“That’s what you come here for,” Anderson said. “That’s what they’ve been rebuilding for is moments like this… we’ve got all the right pieces, we’ve just got to go out there and make it happen.”