Incompletions: Texans-Titans (A Football Game Was Played)

MATT WESTON:

In previous seasons, in past lifetimes, Week 17 would be meaningless because the Texans would be 3-12 or 2-13 or 4-11. Something along those lines. So we’d watch them play a game against Tennessee, like in 2013 where it mattered not one bit, because each team was an abomination, an affront to the football gods, or in that specific case, extremely unlucky and roasting in a season from hell.

Yesterday was different. The Texans clinched the AFC South last week with a win in Tampa, which made this game meaningless unless the Chiefs lost to the Chargers. They didn’t. So it was AJ McCarron riding the wave and pulling the curtain back so we could peer back into 2015, Vernon Hargreaves III trying to cover A.J. Brown, and Tyrell Adams attempting to tackle Derrick Henry. None of it worked too well. None of it mattered.

What did matter was on the other sideline. The Titans made the postseason and will be playing New England in a game they can win. Derrick Henry clinched the NFL rushing title. Mike Vrabel doesn’t have to be so angry. These are the joys Houston could have spoiled if they went for it and played their starters. Instead they sat, recovered, and rested up for next week’s game with the Buffalo Bills.

Yesterday was just the prologue before the 2019 NFL Postseason. Now we can focus on what really matters. Josh Allen mixing the horrendous with the sublime, why the Bills’ run defense is bad, who will cover John Brown and Cole Beasley, Buffalo’s power run scheme, why Houston will need to ESTABLISH THE RUN, and whether they will actually throw the ball downfield against Buffalo’s secondary.

I am horrified, excited, and marveling at the beauty of it all. Saturday is going to rip me in two.

DIEHARD CHRIS:

This was what I expected. The Texans would hang for a bit and then get rolled up. It’s all good, totally meaningless, though I wish some of the peripheral guys could have stood out a bit more. Keke Coutee man, wtf.

BFD:

I was pleasantly shocked BOB didn’t treat this game as a way to measure his ***certain body part*** by forcing starters to play and be a leader of men.

My biggest takeaway from this game, and this isn’t exactly rocket science, is that this team is carried by Deshaun Watson. Without Watson, this is a two or three win team, and I don’t even feel like we have much of a chance without him. I honestly think he’s the most valuable player to his team in all of football.

This game was like reliving the second half of the 2017 season as both the offense and the defense sucked. Let’s never, ever do this again.

MIKE BULLOCK:

While I was happy to see McCarron do well early on, that was all undone by watching Hargreaves show why he became available to us in the first place. It’s obvious why the starters didn’t play in a meaningless game, but if they don’t overachieve next week, it will have been for nothing and we will have let a division opponent into the postseason in vain.

TEXAN_REVJ:

This game was just a formality. It would have been nice to ruin the Titans’ playoff dreams, but oh well.

Not much to tell from the Texans’ side. They kept the game somewhat close for longer than I expected; other than that, there isn’t much to say.

Now we head into a match-up with the Bills that I think is probably the worst hand we could have ended up being dealt for the first round of the NFL Playoffs.