Texans stay alive in playoff picture by beating up on AFC South opponents

The Houston Texans control their own playoff destiny after beating the Colts in Indianapolis on Sunday. Winning the AFC South would only be fitting — the Texans have wrecked their local rivals this fall.

Houston is 4-0 against divisional opponents but just 3-6 against the rest of the league. Bill O’Brien’s team has faced a murderer’s row in that stretch. Six of the team’s non-South opponents have led their divisions at some point this season. Five of the six teams to defeat the Texans have winning records: the Patriots, Vikings, Broncos, Raiders, and Packers.

In Week 14, Houston’s defense showed it has the chops to hang with flawed teams. The Texans held Indianapolis to 348 total yards and forced Andrew Luck into three turnovers, including one beautiful, drive-killing strip sack from Jadeveon Clowney.

While Clowney has developed into the kind of player the franchise hoped he could become when he was selected No. 1 overall in 2014, Houston still lacks the extra gear to stop the league’s most dynamic teams. The Broncos, Patriots, Vikings, and Raiders all scored 27 points or more against them. The starting quarterbacks for those first three teams were Trevor Siemian, Jacoby Brissett, and Sam Bradford.

What did those teams have in common? They kept the Houston pass rush at bay. The Texans churned out only three sacks through those four games. This is the kind of problem a healthy J.J. Watt could immediately fix. Clowney, with seven sacks in his past eight games, is doing his best to be the remedy on his own.

The Texans are winning despite Brock Osweiler

Houston’s quarterback problems reached a breaking point last January when Brian Hoyer bottomed out harder than a late-'90s Honda Accord in a neighborhood full of speed bumps. The journeyman threw four interceptions, completed just 15 of his 36 passes, and finished with a quarterback rating of 15.9 in the Texans' 30-0 playoff loss to Kansas City. To better understand how impressively terrible that is, Hoyer could have spiked the ball every down and still ended up with a 39.6.

Enter Osweiler, who signed a four-year, $72 million contract to take the reins and settle a depth chart that had been missing a solid starter since Matt Schaub was in town. But the former Bronco has been worse than Schaub, and to suggest he’s played up to his $18 million per year contract would be borderline heresy.

Houston's mastery of AFC South opponents has given it a leg up in the most important tiebreaker scenarios, so the Titans and Colts will chase the Texans in the season's final three weeks to have a shot at the division crown. The Texans have two more games against division foes coming up — including a matchup against 2-11 Jacksonville — and will need to just match Tennessee's record over the final three weeks of the season to clinch a playoff spot. The odds of a return to the postseason are firmly on Osweiler and his team's side.