The 2010 Texans: Unable to Escape Fate (hat tip: Texanschick)

[Brisco_County]

As it turns out, all of you are the ones at fault for your frustration --not the Texans-- because you set your expectations too high to begin with.

Football Outsiders predicts the Texans to win....6 games or less?


Q&A with Bill Barnwell

Steph: Last year, Football Outsider projections had a grim assessment of the Texans wins for 2009, projecting 6.9 wins. (In 2008, it projected 8.9 wins) In 2010, the projection is even grimmer, with 5.6 wins projected (a 51% projection of being 4-6, 19% projecting 7-8, 7% projecting 9-10 and 4% at being a 11 plus win team).

Could you explain why the projection keeps getting grimmer even though it looks like the Texans should be better with more returning starters and more of the young players getting familiar with each other than the scheme they play in?

Bill: I think those factors you mentioned are positives, but they're outweighed by the negative factors. They have a tough schedule, one we expect to be ninth in the league. The Texans had the league's fifth-easiest schedule a year ago. Although I certainly believe that Houston has a lot of young talent on defense, the parts haven't added up to anything valuable yet -- even with the eighth-healthiest unit in football last year, the Texans' defense was 18th in the league in DVOA. They're going to suffer more injuries this year (even without including the Cushing suspension), and our projection system thinks the increase in injuries will be more important than the growth of Houston's young players.

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