Tillman Picks Texans to Super Bowl, See's Watt's Return...

SPONSORED CONTENT

Fox Sports 1 analyst, and ABC 13's Inside the Game Co-Host, Spencer Tillman sees a lot of good things coming out of NRG on Kirby. With Romeo Crennel's 3-4 D, the pressure is coming from all over the place. In light of Scarlett's injury and Cole being on the IR, Jacob Martin is seizing the opportunity and Tillman believes he is a great addition on the outside edge with tremendous speed. The Texans have shored up the secondary with the return of Bradley Roby, and are seeing great linebacker play out of the Swat Team, Benardrick McKinney and Zach Cunningham.

Spencer also sees the Texans high powered offense, with tremendous quarterback play and Watson's use of all of the tools in the toolbox, starting to fire on all cylinders. If the Texans can play at a high level to finish the season, and with what he believes as a realistic chance of JJ Watt retuning as early as round one of the playoffs, Tillman thinks the Texans, sitting at 8-4, can make a legitimate run for a Super Bowl appearance.

Here's a segment of our interview with Spencer, as we break down the Texans' win over the Patriots, talk about the rise of the Ravens and the Forty-Niners and the potential return of JJ Watt.


Roger Patterson is the author of A Minute of Vison for Men: 365 Motivational Moments to Kick-Start Your Day, available at www.rogerpatterson.squarespace.com. Follow @rogerpatterson and @timyeager on twitter and subscribe to their podcast, Vision for Life Radio: Where Faith and Sports Collide.

Most Popular

Everyone is talking about the Texans! Composite Getty Image.

How quickly things can change in a year. Just last April, Texans fans were on the edge of their seats hoping the organization would land their franchise quarterback in the NFL Draft.

Fast-forward to 2024 and the state of the Texans franchise is almost unrecognizable. NBC Sports' Mike Florio is making statements about how the NFL must love the Texans because they are the proof that any team can turn their franchise around in one year. Which makes the NFL Draft look even more important. Draft picks give fanbases hope, and unlike baseball and to some extent basketball, many of the top picks start right away.

More Texans love

Other national media members like Colin Cowherd are creating segments about which teams could be the 2025 version of the Texans. In fact, Cowherd praised the Texans last week for reaching out to him two years ago for information about Notre Dame safety Kyle Hamilton.

Post-free agency he picked the Texans to miss the playoffs, but it seems like he's rethinking his prediction.

Counterpoint

Some in the media have their concerns about the Texans trade for Stefon Diggs. Ross Tucker was a guest of the Rich Eisen Show and questioned if wiping the remaining years off of Diggs' contract was a good idea.

First, he thought trading a 2025 second-round pick was too much to give up for a player on a one-year deal. But his second point made us stop and think. He compared this situation to something he experienced in his playing career. He's worried that if Diggs isn't getting enough targets and production in a contract year, he might become a problem.

And the Texans have plenty of weapons to spread the ball to this year with Nico Collins, Diggs, Tank Dell, Dalton Schultz, Noah Brown, Robert Woods, Joe Mixon…you get the point.

So we did a little digging into the numbers. There's a scenario in which the Texans could have two receivers go over one thousand yards.

Everybody eats!

We can just look around the league and see that both the Eagles (AJ Brown, DeVonta Smith) and Dolphins (Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle) did it in 2022 and 2023. The Bengals (Ja'Marr Chase, Tee Higgins) also had two receivers go over a thousand yards in 2021 and 2022.

CJ Stroud averaged 274 passing yards per game in 2023, if we multiply that number by seventeen games that puts CJ at 4,658 yards. Nico Collins had 1,297 yards in 15 games last season, and Stefon Diggs recorded 1,183 receiving yards. So that would leave 2.178 yards for the other pass catchers in the offense.

While it's unlikely Tank Dell gets to one thousand if everyone stays healthy, he could get fairly close. Stroud doesn't throw to his running backs all that often, and the Texans should have Dell, Diggs, and Collins together on the field more than fifty percent of the time.

Don't count him out

Texans quarterback CJ Stroud met with the Houston media this week and talked about the team's wide receiver room, which now includes Stefon Diggs.

One of the other names he brought up was receiver John Metchie III. Stroud said he's looking good in workouts, so he could be another mouth to feed in the Houston offense.

And considering how the season finished in Baltimore for the Texans, having too many receivers is a good problem to have. If we only look at the wide receivers and eliminate tight ends and running backs from the conversation, the picture becomes very clear. Collins led the wide receivers with 5 catches for 68 yards. Which receiver came in second, you ask? Robert Woods with 1 catch for 6 yards.

Bring on the receivers!

Don't miss the video above for the full discussion about Diggs, the Texans' new-look offense, and how they are being perceived by the media.

Most Popular

SportsMap Emails
Are Awesome

Listen Live

ESPN Houston 97.5 FM