Why the Texans will win the Super Bowl
Because the defense gets back to its elite form. Despite being one of the top defenses all season, the last month has been discouraging. From Weeks 15-18, the Texans ranked 12th in defensive EPA/play despite playing the Cardinals, Raiders, Chargers and Colts. For a unit that was battling the Seahawks to be recognized as the league’s best defense about a month ago, they’ve fallen off quite a bit. And given the state of the Texans’ offense, the defense must be elite for Houston to win the Super Bowl. One thing to note about the defense, in the first thirteen weeks of the season, the Texans blitzed at the 15th highest rate in the league, but since Week 14, that number dropped to last. Could blitzing more push the defense back to top form? We’ll find out soon if the Texans believe that to be the case.
Why they won’t
Because the offense is still not Super Bowl caliber. The Texans’ offense ranked 22nd in EPA/play and 28th in success rate. That success rate figure is sandwiched between the lowly Dolphins and Jets. That doesn’t sound like a Super-Bowl winning team, does it? C.J. Stroud was the second-best quarterback in success rate against Cover 1 this year, but against every other type of coverage, he didn’t rank above 20th in success rate. When you’re below average against a majority of coverages, you become easy to game plan against, and that’s going to be a big reason the Texans can’t ride their defense to a ring.