From a Tennesse Titan Fan: The Texans Will make the playoffs this year.

Which firm? I used to work for Andersen and EY. Man, those Andersen dudes had me working almost 80 hours a week in my first busy season!!!!

 

kind of random way to look at it, though. Not that I don't agree with you, they would have had difficulty making the playoffs when healthy...

BUT, the score at the beginning of the game of all those losses was 0-0. Why look at the 4Q score? i think when people are saying if the Texans were healthy, they are implying for entire games and weeks at a time, not just for fourth quarters...

 

because the 4Q can be a meaningless 15 minutes of football based on what transpires the previous 45 minutes.

case in point: in week 3, they lost to indianapolis 30-24. if you were going to argue a healthy johnson would have made a difference in that game... looking at the final score, it's certainly possible.

but when you consider houston trailed 27-10 after 3, and that their lone TD was the openng kick return... well, in that light, a healthy johnson probably doesn't make a game-changing difference because the team was getting its dick kicked.

so looking at the first 3Qs, which includes halftime for teams to make adjustments, etc., is often (IMO) a much better barometer of a how a game is playing out.

 

work for a middle market firm called UHY, hours arent crazy but around 50-65 during busy season

 

Here's the deal. AJ is a pro bowl receiver that requires double coverage. Our other receivers aren't half as good as AJ. In the last half of the 06 season, McKinney went back to being the starting center and our running game came alive. This continues into the 07 season and Green is playing well also.

After 2 games, we are 2-0 convincingly, but have lost AJ. We barely loose the 3rd game to the Colts without AJ, but have lost McKinney and Green is hobbled-from which he never recovers. So for the last 13 games, our wides are single covered and our running game has lost its #1 running back and o-line anchor. Schaub got hurt because we can't get consistant yardage on 1st down and we're facing 2nd/3rd and long most of the time with 7-9 pass rushers.

Now without a healthy starting wr, rb, c and qb, this is like asking the Rockets to make the playoffs and get into the 2nd round without both Yao & TMac. JayZ750 was saying that without the 4 main cogs of the offense, that offense isn't going to be able to score as many points at the beginning of the game. Hence the fact that only once did we score more than 10 points in the 1st 3 quarters of our losses. If we aren't on the field long enough to score points, our defense is playing more & isn't as effective in the 2nd half.

With those 4 starters in the line up, we score more points and give up less points. Would we have won all those games? No! But we would have been in the playoffs and been fun to watch.

 

we didn't "barely" lose to the colts; they kicked our asses, as they've done every year of our existence (with one notable exception). we scored 3 offensive points in the first 3Qs that day and trailed by 17 to start the 4Q. manning was nearly unstoppable (as usual) and our only touchdown was the opening kick-off - which was actually, fortunately, a re-kick after indianapolis committed a penalty on the first attempt.

and yes, we convincingly won out first two games... against teams that combined to win 11 games. they were great wins, and the team played well - but i'm not sure they were necessarily a portend of things to come had everyone stayed healthy.

when did steve mckinney become the second coming of anthony munoz? i mean, he's a nice player and all, but... i think we're overblowing how impactful he is. why didn't his presence make this much difference the first 4 years?

also, teams don't rush 7 and certainly not 9 players. had they done that, i suspect the texans would have scored more often, regardless of who was healthy.

i agree there's a correlation to the offense being impacted by the defense and vice-versa; however, rosenfels played as well as schaub would have had schaub been healthy - i think you might be overestimating schaub if you believe otherwise. and while ahman green healthy is probably better than ron dayne... again, i'm not sure the difference is that significant.

johnson's injury definitely had an impact on the team's fortunes. but, again - given that with a healthy johnson, houston was 2-3 against winning teams (with one of those wins against jacksonville's 2nd and 3rd stringers on the final sunday), which of the five losses w/o johnson does houston turn into a two victories w/ him? indianapolis? atlanta? jacksonville? tennessee? san diego?

as mentioned, maybe, probably atlanta - maybe. but the other four combined to win 45 games last year and we lost those 4 games by an average score of 35-22 - and that's with an off-the-charts 4Q against tennessee. discount that ridiculous 15 minutes of football, and the average score would have been 34-15. johnson's good, but he ain't that good.

 

Since when did the opinion of a Tennessee Titan fan become worthy of a thread?