Week 15 G.O.A.T.s: The Division Championship Edition

For the second straight season, the imaginary trophy for the AFC South champion resides in Houston, Texas, home of the Texans. While it is still pretty cool to think about Bob McNair's faith in Gary Kubiak and Rick Smith being rewarded, a division championship will not cut it like last year. There is still the matter of a bye week and home-field advantage throughout the AFC Playoffs (and, in a way, the entire NFL playoffs since the Super Bowl would be played only 355 miles away from Reliant Stadium). There is still the matter of other championships, as well.

This has been a fun ride, and we should enjoy this because 12-wins is a rarity in the NFL, but the goal was never to just get to the playoffs. It is a nice moment, but the expectations are higher this season and they will be even higher if Houston secures a bye and home-field advantage with one win in either of its final two games. Hopefully the Texans can maintain that sense of business this week and take care of Minnesota on Sunday because it sure would be nice for this Twin Cities Texan to have some bragging rights until Houston comes to the new Vikings stadium in 2016.

Lets get on and get off some Texans, shall we?

Get On...The Run Defense
One can make the argument that defensive coordinator Wade Phillips perhaps schemed to stop Indianapolis quarterback Andrew Luck and a prolific Indy passing attack. Phillips and company succeeded there, but it still does not make it any easier to swallow Vick Ballard running for 105 yards on Sunday.

Yes, that would be the same Vick Ballard who entered Sunday's contest averaging 42.5 yards per game. Granted, Indianapolis, as a whole, only had 18 more rushing yards than their season per game average entering the game (105.8 rushing YPG) and Houston only allowed 33 more yards than they had been allowing per game. However, it still felt worse than that because Vick Ballard ran for 5.8 yards per carry. This is disconcerting, especially when presumptive Comeback Player of the Year and MVP Candidate Adrian Peterson is headed to Houston for an 'Irresistible Force/Immovable Object' battle with presumptive Defensive Player of the Year and MVP Candidate J.J. Watt.

Get Off...DeVier Posey...kinda.
At the end of the day, three receptions for 46 yards is not much to write home about. However, it does go beyond my initial post-draft per-game-average expectations for Posey, so we are writing about the potential corner-turning moment.

For the young Buckeye, it has been a trying year. He did not play much football last season due to NCAA violations (I'm sure MDC, the mighty Michigan man, would say they don't play much football in Columbus anyhow but that's neither here nor there). There was a lot of rust for Posey to knock off, and then he gets drafted to a team that expects its wide receivers to know all the routes being run at all times while providing good run blocking on the outside. Heck, some of the receivers are even asked to block in the box.

Posey had a chance on the field yesterday and delivered. He ran decent routes and showed some good short-area quickness. He caught 100% of his targeted passes. He also caught a 36-yard pass that put Houston in field goal range. This is the second straight week where he had multiple receptions. As I linked, my initial expectations were two receptions for 30 yards. If Posey can continue to meet this and be a solid fourth target, that will help Houston in the playoffs. We still need to see consistency, but it is nice to see one of the rookie receivers make progress.

Your turn, faithful BRB readers. Who are you getting on or off this week?

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