Football Outsiders has a tandem of writers, Tom Gower and Mike Kurtz, who handle "Scramble For The Ball", which is a weekly column of sorts that handles a variety of goofy topics. This week, they have AFC over/unders, and with the Texans at 8, they stick by FO's projection system and it's guns. Here is the text:
↵↵↵Tom: The big thing is the defense; I mentioned in Four Downs this offseason that the Texans have never had an above-average pass defense by DVOA. Sure, they drafted Kareem Jackson in the first round, but they lost Dunta Robinson. Yeah, it's cool, let's all rip on Dunta Robinson, but he's almost certainly still better than a rookie corner, and they still don't have a free safety they can trust.
↵Mike: No, I agree that the pass defense is largely garbage, but if the offense is good enough to win the inevitable shootouts, it's not a fatal flaw.
↵Tom: I'm still more worried about Matt Schaub being healthy than I am with whoever is playing running back.
↵Mike: That's another high point: When Schaub is injured, there will be no Rex Grossman Experience! That alone may be the best roster change in the NFL.
↵Tom: Yes, they've swapped the Rex Grossman Experience for the Dan Orlovsky Experience!
↵Mike: I'll take cannoli over the dragon any day of the week.
↵Tom: Here's the thing about the red zone stuff; our numbers, as shown in ESPN's fantasy football magazine, say the Texans were actually OK in the red zone. They were 13th in red zone touchdown rate and slightly below-average running inside the five, mostly because Chris Brown sucks at power running.
↵I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but I think I'm thinking that whatever Houston's problems were last year, it wasn't necessarily with the running back.
↵Mike: Probably true, and also probably true that even if the running game is good, the chance of injury to Schaub is too great to have much optimism for this team.
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They both picked the under on 8 wins for the Texans.
↵I have to say, this might be a reaction to how sick I am of hearing about Schaub's injuries, but didn't Wes Welker just come back from a total ACL tear in about 7 months? Isn't medicine getting better? Shouldn't we err towards the side of talent rather than the side of injury?
↵Then again, I am a Texans fan. I do have my biases.
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