Even though the Texans are a much more talented team than the Steelers on both sides of the ball, I worry about Houston\u2019s reliance on field goals, Pittsburgh\u2019s dominant defensive line, and Jaylen Warren\/Kenneth Gainwell.<\/p>\n
The Steelers\u2019 d-line, specifically Cam Heyward, Alex Highsmith, and Nick Herbig, could clog up several of C.J. Stroud\u2019s passing lanes, so (Stroud) will need to be quick and decisive if Houston is hoping to pass the ball to victory.<\/p>\n
Running the ball well will almost certainly be out of the question for the Texans against this Steelers front, so Stroud will need to play well and play fast.<\/p>\n
On Pittsburgh\u2019s offense, they\u2019ve become very reliant on their RB duo and offensive line to get nice gains on first\/second down, or for screen passes. Both backs are short, explosive, and very hard to tackle, so Texans LBs Azeez Al-Shaair and Henry To\u2019oTo\u2019o will need to be on their A-game to prevent any big runs from breaking loose. Ashton Jeanty showed how quickly things can get ugly for Houston\u2019s defense if they aren\u2019t prepared.<\/p>\n
Then, there\u2019s kicking in that god-forsaken (or blessed?) stadium. You could argue Ka\u2019imi Fairbairn has been the most impactful player for the Texans this entire season thanks to his bountiful field goals, and they\u2019ll probably need to count on him again since the Steelers defense has a knack to bend but not break. Fairbairn will need to handle odd, unpredictable wind gusts in cold weather, which is not an ideal situation considering how important he is to the game for Houston. As long as they can give him attempt inside of 40-45 yards, Fairbairn should be fine.<\/p>\n
As for a final score, I\u2019ll go with Texans 24, Steelers 21. I think both teams with score points off of turnovers, and Houston will pull away in the end thanks to another dominant performance from Will Anderson Jr. and Danielle Hunter. When they are needed most, they will bring down Aaron Rodgers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even though the Texans are a much more talented team than the Steelers on both sides of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[50711,56,58,57,23714,40884,35447],"class_list":{"0":"post-120230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-groupthink","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-headlines","11":"tag-houston-news","12":"tag-houston-texans-analysis","13":"tag-houston-texans-playoffs","14":"tag-pre-game-recon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}