If you’re a sports fan that’s into the probabilities for various scenarios for your favorite team, we live in a beautiful era. Whereas in the pre-internet days, we were left to just guess using gut feel on certain outcomes, now the web is flush with sites that can tell you down to the percentage point, what your team’s chances for making the playoffs, and garnering playoff success, are.
For the Houston Texans, we live in fun times. The AFC South, outside of the Texans, is a train wreck, and as a result, the odds of the Texans making the postseason are almost prohibitively tilted in the team’s favor right now. According to the analytics website PlayoffStatus.com, here are the percentage chances for the Texans to accomplish these various tiers of team success this season:
Make the playoffs: 97 percent
Win one playoff game: 54 percent
Make conference title game: 19 percent
Make the Super Bowl: 7 percent
Win the Super Bowl: 3 percent
Here are a few thoughts on these encouraging developments:
If the Texans handle their division business, they’re set
The Texans are 7-4 with their next two games against the 2-8 Tennessee Titans and the 2-9 Jacksonville Jaguars. They also have a season finale in Nashville against the Titans. The fact of the matter is, if the Texans take care of their business in those three games, they’ll be, worst case, 10-7 on the season. The Texans, by virtue of their season sweep over them, hold the tiebreaker over the 5-6 Indianapolis Colts in the division. So long as the Texans win their remaining division games, the Colts would have to sweep the rest of their games to win the division, a possibility that should get extinguished this weekend when the Colts host the 9-1 Detroit Lions.
Here are the likely Texans first round opponents, as of today
The most likely scenario, by far, for the Texans is that, like last season, they win the AFC South and host a playoff game as the 4-seed in the AFC. This means they would face the best of the three wild card teams, like they did last season when they faced 11-6 Cleveland in the opening round. That draw was good for the Texans, as they trounced the Browns by a 45-14 score. This season, as of this week, here are the likely opponents for the Texans in the wild card round:
Chargers: 38 percent
Ravens: 26 percent
Broncos: 11 percent
Colts: 7 percent
Steelers: 6 percent
There are no layups on that list right now for the Texans.
We should have a real good gauge on what exactly the Texans are by the end of the year
Unlike last season, when the Texans spent most of the time down the stretch with C.J. Stroud nursing a concussion and playing against opponents inside the division, this season the Texans have two of the marquee teams in the league on their schedule within four days of each other. In Week 16, the Texans travel to Kansas City and then four days later, they host the Baltimore Ravens at home. This should give the Texans a pretty firm idea as to what type of team they have going into the postseason.
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
