The final play against Oakland. I think we'll romp to a division title with relative ease so the Raider loss won't be THAT big a deal - but... 5-2 would look a WHOLE lot better than 4-3. If you look at their schedule... they have three games where they might - *might* - not be favored. But right now, I think they're the better team in every single remaining game. They should absolutely be 8-3 when Atlanta comes to town and 11-12 wins is very doable. It's the Texans so I have no delusions but...
Looking at the schedule...anything worse than 11-5 is a disappointment. Im looking for a 12 win season at this point. 12 wins, fellas...I dont care how "soft" the schedule appears, this is quite a turnaround. Must enjoy every second of it.
No one should be disappointed with 10-6. The wins over Pittsburgh and Tennessee prove that this is not like any other Texan team.
So far we have played 2 1/2 games without our best Back, 3 1\2 games without our best Wideout, 2 1/2 games without our best Pass Rusher, 2 1/2 games w/o our Feature FB/TE And we lead the division 4-3 (2-0) Now Manning is out. Its gonna hurt, but everybody needs to step up, especially one of the Rookies.
I disagree; I have a vastly different take on that game. While disappointing, it was pretty evident that we were not the better team that day. The Raiders shut down Foster, didn't have Andre to worry about and harrassed the living heck-fire out of Schaub. But our defense played *very* well (Oakland may be the only team that has a kicker capable of hitting 3 50-yard FGs) and the offense, despite a day of struggle, was in position to win it in the end. It was certainly Texan-like in the many botched opportunities (Rackers, Vickers and the final play) - but I would contend any other Texan team would have been blown away in that game. We've never had a defense good enough to step up when the offense is having an off-day (which will happen) and the offense was in position to win it despite having the off-day. This is the toughest Texan team I've ever seen. I'm not 100% sold on them (in terms of being elite) - but it's wildly different than the mental Kleenexes of years past, IMO.
That, and the final, losing score, was my point. I'll mostly give you that; perhaps in 2004 that defense may have had them in a good place. (remember how maddening the offseason of 2004 was?? We had a lousy offense and a good defense, so C&C blow up the defense and do *nothing* to address the offense! still smh...)
I wouldn't worry too much about it. Jacksonville is not a good football team. We should easily romp. Baltimore has now lost to Tennessee and Jacksonville, both on the road. That was more telling than anything the Jags did, IMO.
