Battle Red Balls: Chargers v. Texans

It’s that time again! Time to give out the single most prestigious award ever given in this column: the greatly sought after Battle Red Balls!

This week, it’s all about overcoming a hangover. A turkey hangover from Thursday. A mile high air pressure hangover from Mexico City. A laser-pointer-to-the-eye hangover for Brock Osweiler’s vision. And, a “will the refs screw us again?” hangover from the Monday Night game.

Fear not, true believers! The Texans are at home this week, so anyone aiming a laser pointer at a player might just be dragged out side and beaten with 10-pound slab of smoked meat.

All right, let’s get to it then, shall we?

Capt. Ron:

Defense: Jadeveon Clowney continues to rise. He will dominate Melvin Gordon and Philip Rivers all game long.

Offense: DeAndre Hopkins. Brock finally got in sync with NUK.

Tim:

Offense: Will Fuller. He gets behind the Chargers' secondary for his first touchdown since Week Four.

Defense: Benardrick McKinney. While I harbor reservations about the idea of B-Mac having to cover anyone in the passing game, I do feel like he's going to be nightmare fuel for Melvin Gordon in the running game. Another double-digit tackle performance for the second-year Mississippi State star.

Luke:

Offense: I'll take Lamar Miller for a 100-110 yard game on 20-25 carries with a rushing TD, plus 30 or so yards in the receiving game.

Defense: Jadeveon Clowney finally has a breakout statistical game and charts his first two sack game of the year.

Diehard Chris:

Offense - Brock Osweiler. In the interest of the holiday season, I'm going to just go crazy and hope that he puts up his second consecutive non-terrible performance of the year. That said, I feel like I am honor-bound to mention Osweiler admitted the laser pointers in Mexico City did in fact affect his play, yet it was one of his better games of the year, so... well, I don't know what to do with that. Maybe they should perform Lasik on him during game action and we'll see what happens.

Defense - Whitney Mercilus. He's been a bit quiet lately, at least in the stat lines. Let's see if we can get a two sack performance out of Whitney and set the tone for the stretch run.

UprootedTexan:

Offense: Let's see if Brock Osweiler can build on last week's performance and that it wasn't just a "good" performance against a bad defense.

Defense: Same thing for Jadeveon Clowney. I want to see him be the terror he was on Monday night.

Mike:

Offense: Braxton Miller. The Chargers will have no answers for the Miller brothers, but this is the breakout game for the former Ohio State superstar.

Defense: Jadeveon Clowney. We haven’t seen this guy reach his ceiling yet. Philip Rivers and the Chargers offense will be yet another set of stairs for Clowney to step on during his continued ascent.

Got balls? Wanna give ‘em away? Feel free to hand ‘em out in the comments below!