In his, thus far, brief Houston Texans head coaching career, DeMeco Ryans has just a small sample of times where he’s had to coach his team up on a short week. For our purposes, a “short week” will be defined as a game played four days after the previous game.
In Ryans’ initial season, the Texans had no short weeks. They were coming off of a horrible 3-13-1 season in 2022, so the league wanted no part of them on Thursday Night Football. Things changed last season, though, after C.J. Stroud’s rookie season, and the Texans had two short weeks in which they played prime time games.
Both games went poorly. On Halloween night, the Texans allowed an eventual 5-12 New York Jets outfit to beat them 21-13, in one of Aaron Rodgers’ few competent performances. Then, on Christmas afternoon, the Ravens took the Texans to the wood shed in a 31-2 thrashing. Both games were their own kind of hideous.
Now, here come the 7-3 Buffalo Bills, favorites to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl, for a Thursday night matchup at NRG Stadium. The Bills have not fared well in Houston with Josh Allen as their quarterback, 0-3 in his career at NRG Stadium. The Texans are 1-6 the last seven times they’ve played on a national broadcast.
Something’s gotta give tonight at NRG Stadium. Here are four things to watch for:
4. Contain Josh Allen’s scrambling
The Texans’ defense has done way more good than bad this season, as they’ve led the league in scoring defense since the start of the season. One area, though, that has been an issue has been allowing quaretrback scrambles, especially late in games. Blake Mayfield kept a winning drive alive in Week 2 with his legs, and Bo Nix set up the game winning field goal for the Broncos in Week 9. Trevor Lawrence and Cam Ward had late game scrambles the last two weeks, but the Texans overcame. Josh Allen is a better runner than all of these guys. Significantly so. With a pedestrian receiving corps, Allen’s avenue to hurting the Texans the worst likely comes on the ground. They must contain him.
3. Hammer Marks and Chubb
On the other side of the football, the Texans offensively want to establish the running game. Some games it’s been okay, other games it’s been abysmal. Thursday night’s game is a real opportunity to set the tone of this game on the ground. The Bills have given up around 200 yards on the ground in each of the last two weeks. The Texans seem to have moved the ground game onto Woody Marks’ plate, but I could see this being a 1-2 punch game between the two Texans backs.
2. Nico Collins
Over the last few weeks, Collins has begun to reestablish himself as one of the premier wide receivers in football. Last week was a vintage Nico week, with nine catches on ten targets for 92 yards and a touchdown. Last season, Collins started off the game with a 78 yard bomb for a touchdown, however, he suffered a hamstring injury on the play and missed a month. Davis Mills is going to start again for the Texans, and he has not been shy about peppering Collins with targets, 25 in the last two games, to be exact.
1. Home field advantage
It was the Bills game in Week 5 last season that really established NRG Stadium as a house of horrors for most of the opposing quarterbacks on the schedule. (Lamar Jackson seemed to like it just fine.) Josh Allen had his worst game of the season, and arguably of his career, going 9 for 30 for just 131 yards. The Texans could use a similar raucous atmosphere on Thursday night. Hopefully, the two game winning streak provides some carryover from the final moments of the comeback over the Jaguars, when a half full NRG Stadium was as loud as it’s been all season.
SPREAD: Texans +6
PREDICTION: Bills 24, Texans 20
SEASON RECORD: 5-5 SU, 5-5 ATS