Quick Slant: TNF - Could Health Cost the Texans an Easy Win?
Texans @ Jets, Thursday @ 8:15 PM
The Jets make their weekly pilgrimage to a nationally televised island game. Is it the most overexposed team in football history? People are starting to talk.
Obviously, the Jets represent a big market, and, of course, Aaron Rodgers is a huge name. The merger of the two created immense excitement a summer ago, but it ended abruptly in the first possession of 2023 – excruciating, even for those unaffiliated. And so the Jets launched 2024 like a redemption tour – an all-in, pin-your-ears-back barnstorm to the top of the AFC East and beyond. Instead, it has played like a practical joke, perhaps a sunset streak for Rodgers, or even a dirge for one of the most unsuccessful attempts to buy a title ever concocted. At 2-6, time is running out for this iteration of Gang Green. After 2024, the old get older, the staff gets flipped, and the entire operation seems less likely to work later than it already does now. That makes this now-or-never turned up to eleven for almost everyone affiliated.
The Texans entered 2024 as a more accomplished brand of darling. They had entered 2023 as sleepy underdogs with miles to go before they could reasonably contend; they exited as playoff participants with massive cap space and an inexpensive and impressive known quantity at QB, giving them the financial flexibility to go headlong into a Super Bowl run. The Texans spent, traded, and did whatever possible to supplement an already promising roster with a greater assemblage of talent. The NFL is an exercise in attrition; as Mike Tyson famously said, everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. The Texans have, in no way, taken the path of least resistance, and yet, they are 6-2, in firm control of their destiny, and fully present within their wildest dreams.
Texans’ Implied Team Total: 20.5
The Texans rank 20th in EPA per play and 25th in offensive success rate. They are 16th in EPA per dropback and 20th in offensive success rate on dropbacks.
This is a surprising outcome thus far based on where we expected Houston to be this year. C.J. Stroud had a rookie season for the ages in 2023. He is one of nine rookie quarterbacks since 2000 who scored 290 or more PPR; of them, he is the only one with as few as five interceptions. Stroud’s rookie season also ranks third in completion percentage, fifth in passing yards, sixth in passing EP, and fifth in passing FPOE among them. He began his sophomore season as one of the most promising QBs in the game.
There isn’t a universe where we could reasonably say Stroud is playing poorly; he’s simply not taken a step forward. But then, when players run hot, they eventually land at a more appropriate temperature. This may just be a case of a good player starting on such a heater that stabilizing looks like cooling. In reality, the Stroud we see today is probably closer to what we should expect, or at least, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
I will leap ahead a little and speak to the fact that the Texans’ lead RB has been nails in fantasy football. We’ll come back to Joe Mixon in a bit. But perception may be that Houston prefers to run.
Contrarily, however, they have the 11th-highest pass rate over expected (PROE) in the league. They are 17th in neutral pass rate and have spent the second-most offensive snaps in a neutral script. They have spent an additional 116 plays from a lead of seven or more, good for 13th in the league. Strangely, their pass rate increases from 54% to 56% while leading by a substantial margin. They have trailed by seven or more infrequently.
They lead the league in time of possession; their opponents have run the fourth fewest offensive snaps per 60 minutes, and the Texans have run the most offensive plays per 60 minutes as well as the most in total, counting overtime.
This type of play volume is good for fantasy; this is a good thesis as we consider the Texans because it covers many sins. Regarding Stroud, he ranks fifth in completions and sixth in attempts. He is respectable in other significant counting stats like passing yards and passing TDs, which we would expect with volume. While he had a high positive FPOE last year (44.7 if you include rushing and passing combined), he has a negative value so far this year.
The absence of Nico Collins due to injury likely has a negative effect on Stroud; a receiver as talented as Collins will extend plays and make lower-probability plays succeed. It is a leap to blame all of Stroud’s reduced efficiency on Collins’s absences in the past three games; however, Stroud’s FPOE was at 6.9 through Collins’s most recent game, and he has been at -7.6 since. Collins is still on IR and will not play Thursday.
To make matters worse, the Texans will also be without Stefon Diggs, who had stepped into a substitute-alpha role while Collins has been away. He is lost for the season with a torn ACL. This puts a lot on the diminutive shoulders of Tank Dell, who will almost have to serve as a de facto No. 1. Last week, the response after Diggs was injured was to have John Metchie and Robert Woods split up the No. 2 role, while Xavier Hutchinson remained No. 3 above either in three-wide. The in-game response to an injury doesn’t guarantee the same reaction with planning or the ability to activate different personnel unavailable in a game in progress.
The only receiver fantasy managers are likely interested in playing is Dell, who has been an incredible disappointment to drafters who took him in the third round of FFPC drafts. Without being hyperbolic, Dell was having a nearly historic rookie WR season a year ago before he broke his leg. Since 2000, only three rookie WRs have ever had per-game stats of 16.5 PPR, 4.7 receptions, 7.5 targets, 70.9 receiving yards, and 0.7 receiving TDs: Odell Beckham, Ja’Marr Chase, and Dell. But Dell has been a different player in 2024; it is at least worth considering that his injury and spring-time gunshot wound from a wrong-place/wrong-time shooting in the spring have affected him more than we realize.
