Houston Texans: Week 17 win would bring AFC South to respectablility

The Houston Texans have a chance to finish the season above .500 with a Week 17 win, helping the AFC South regain some respectability.

9-7 or 8-8. Those are the two possible marks that the 2015 Houston Texans (8-7) will finish the season with.

With a win over the slumping Jacksonville Jaguars (5-10) in week 17, the Texans will officially punch their ticket to the postseason as the AFC South division winner. They’ll have overcome a carousel of quarterbacks, a defense that didn’t live up to its reputation for the first half of the season, and a slew of injuries.

In fact, wining the AFC South will be nothing short of heroic for this team.

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Yet when many people talk about that division, currently led by the Texans and Indianapolis Colts (7-8), it’s to point out just how terrible it has been. It was arguably the worst division in football during 2015 (the NFC East made it look like a fairytale for a while, though) and it has sparked some interesting debate in the NFL.

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Winners of divisions get a home playoff game regardless of record. As the NFL playoff picture currently stands, any AFC wild card team will have a better record than the Texans, even if they finish 9-7 with a win over the Jags. For some, that doesn’t seem fair. Revamping the playoff structure so weaker division winners don’t host games is nothing new, as this Sports Illustrated article notes, but all of that discussion tends to die down when the division winner gets above .500.

For better or for worse, 9-7 feels infinitely better than 8-8, regardless that both could win the division and get the Houston Texans to host a playoff game. It sends a message to the NFL community – fans, writers, players, and other personnel all included – that this team is not some winner of a terrible division, it’s a winner regardless.

Getting to that 9-7 mark would go a long way both for the Texans and for the AFC South. The AFC South could finish with two teams at .500 or better if the Colts and Texans both win. That’d show that the division isn’t some woeful backwater of the NFL (even if many of those two team’s wins came against AFC South opponents) and it would help bring some respectability back to a division that once yielded three playoff teams in one year.

Sure, it’ll still be an ugly mark, but getting over that .500 hump is a massive deal in today’s NFL. The Texans may get to do it with Brandon Weeden (yes, you read that correctly) at quarterback! They may be able to get into the postseason and win nine games without Arian Foster for almost the entire season!

The Houston Texans have battled through adversity to even be able to attempt getting above .500 this season. For many teams, not having a true quarterback and losing their stud running back would be the final nail in the coffin. The Texans have managed to make some magic happen.

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Hopefully that will be the storyline whether they enter the postseason at 8-8 or 9-7. This Texans team is something special and should be commended for how well they have been managing chaos through the season. They’ll acquit themselves well and bring respectability back to a woebegone division regardless of how it all shakes out.

…of course, the hapless Colts could still technically win the division.