Interesting point. My expectations for next season are all about player development, not win/loss. I'll want to see how the QBs look in preseason, but my guess is the Texans win 4-6 games, and that's assuming Arian can stay healthy.
4-12 with the joke of a schedule they have this year would be infinitely worse than the 2-14 they were last year. Anything less than 8 wins would be embarrassing.
Brand me as bullish on the Texans, but I think they will be a Cinderella team this year. Let's see, exactly how many pro bowlers did we lose to injury last year? And how much "first round" talent did we acquire? Aside from Clowney, I was surprised that Louis Nix and Xavier Sua-Filo were not taken in the first round. The jury is out on Savage and Fiedorowicz. I hope the Texans saw something in these guys rather than just a jab to sports writers who have to spell Fiedo's name. I still have more faith in Case Keenum, although Savage has a more marketable name. All in all, if the Texans can smooth things over with Andre Johnson and Arian Foster returns to pre-injury form, we will be in great shape -- maybe even 11-5 or 12-4 shape.
Soft last place schedule and legit coach and offensive line even if through osmosis alone. I'm proclaiming it on June 1, 2014 this team will win 11 regular season games
Texans were the worst team in the NFL on getting turnovers and also at giving them away. With the infusion of youth and hope they should reverse that trend and get their mojo back. If they do, they will definitely turn this thing around.
I agree with the vast majority of Barnwell’s piece but would concur that maybe ”(bad) luck” wasn’t the best way to explain away the Texans’ season. Luck doesn’t normally play well with fans; especially fans in the midst of a 3-17 stretch. At some point, “bad luck” takes a backseat to just “bad.” If you look at those 20 games, though, the Texans turned it over 36 times but only forced 14, including ten games without a forced turnover (which is just… it’s unfathomable). (And, frankly, the 36 number isn’t too terribly egregious – again, this is over 20 games and they did have a three-game stretch last year in which they turned it over 11 times (which is awful); so 25 TOs in the other 17 games is fairly average-ish.) Looking at just last year, the Texans forced 11 turnovers; won the turnover battle just twice (and went 0-2, of course - though, to be fair, the combined margin of defeat was four points) and had 9 (!) games of zero forced turnovers. I don’t know where that would rank all-time but it is preposterously bad. So bad that if the Texans made absolutely zero changes, the law of averages alone would favor the Texans favorably regressing to the mean. The Texans are 5-15 over the past three seasons when they lose the turnover battle. So, in theory – and this gets back to what I think Barnwell means by “luck” – if you combine the likely (positive) turnover regression with better (not necessarily great) coaching and schemes, increased/healthy talent and even minor improvement from your QB (all plausibly likely outcomes, given how bad these things were last year), the journey to (at least) 8-8 isn’t nearly as far off as the record might indicate. * As a point of comparison, looking at the three teams that finished behind the Texans last year, Washington, Jacksonville and Cleveland: Washington won the turnover battle four times and had just a single game without a forced TO; the Jags won the turnover battle six times and only had five games of zero forced turnovers; and the Browns won the turnover battle six times and only had four games of zero forced turnovers. The Texans were incredibly worse – and over more games.
