The Texans need to find their groove before the playoffs.
The Houston Texans have been locked into the playoffs for a couple of weeks now, and they have had a stranglehold on the AFC South for even longer than that. Despite that, this has been a frustrating team all season long that has struggled to play its best football consistently.
The Texans are also locked into the No. 4 seed and a home game in the first round of the playoffs, which gives them the option to rest their starters in an essentially meaningless Week 18 game against the Tennessee Titans. However, head coach DeMeco Ryans has no plans to sit anybody out in Week 18, according to DJ Bien-Aime of ESPN.
“DeMeco Ryans said ‘that everybody has to be ready to go, and that's where we are. Everyone will be out there playing,'” Bien-Aime reported on X, formerly Twitter.
The move to play all of the starters is a smart one by Ryans because of how the Texans have looked lately. Houston seemed to just be scraping by for most of the season, but the last two weeks have been very revealing. The Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens, two of the contenders in the AFC, have had their way with the Texans and pushed them down into the bottom tier of playoff teams.
The Texans need to find their groove before the playoffs start, and a matchup with a Titans team that only has three wins this season and may have one eye focused on a vacation and a top draft pick could be a great opportunity. It's understandable that the Texans would want a chance at a get-right game on Sunday before the playoffs get going.
Texans need to fix offensive line before playoffs
Something that has hampered the Texans all season long, not just in this latest losing streak, is the play of the offensive line. C.J. Stroud has taken a step back this year, and part of the burden of that falls on him. However, the situation around Stroud has deteriorated and has hurt his chances to succeed.
Even the veterans on the offensive line, such as Shaq Mason and Laremy Tunsil, have struggled both in execution and with the mental parts of the game. The entire offensive line has suffered from breakdown after breakdown all season, and Stroud is constantly working out of muddy pockets with pressure all around him as a result.
On top of the struggles of the offensive line play, the Texans' pass catchers have been depleted as well. Stefon Diggs and Tank Dell are both out with season-ending injuries, leaving Nico Collins as the only true star weapon on the outside for Stroud.
It's very possible, likely even, that these issues won't be fixed this season. Diggs and Dell aren't coming back, and there are no saviors coming to the offensive line in the next week. However, if the Texans can somehow build any sort of momentum in Week 18 that they can carry into the playoffs, they still have the talent to be dangerous.
