On Thursday night, the Indianapolis Colts travel to Texas to take on the Houston Texans. The Colts are 2-2 and the Texans are currently 1-3. Both teams have struggled this season, but the Texans are the favorites by 1 point, according to the Vegas sports books. This doesn’t mean much, especially because they are the home teams. In other words, this game can realistically go either way.
A lot of the game’s excitement has been marred by the fact that the Colts recently cut one of their backup quarterbacks, and then resigned him a few days later. Andrew Luck missed the first game of his NFL career last week because of a sore shoulder, and the behind the scenes action going on in Indy is casting doubts on whether or not he will be coming back any time in the near future. Reports from the team say that Luck looks good in practice, but this doesn’t mean that he will be coming back any time soon. If it benefits the Colts over the course of the season to keep him out a few more games, they probably will do this. It looks like Luck playing will be a game time decision. He’s probably not worth putting on your daily fantasy football roster for this reason. The Colts’ regular backup, Matt Hasselbeck, missed practice because of illness, making the situation even more complicated.
The Texans have had problems of their own. QB Ryan Mallett has only had a completion rate of 51.8 percent and 3 touchdowns, with 3 interceptions on top of this poor showing. He’s currently one of the worst ranking QBs in the NFL. However, with running back Arian Foster playing now, the Texans should be getting a nice little statistic boost for this game. He underperformed last weekend with only 10 yards on 8 attempts, but now that he’s worked some kinks out after his season debut, this Thursday should see a better performance from him. The downside to the Texans, though, is that wide receiver Cecil Shorts suffered a dislocated shoulder last week and will be out indefinitely. He’s not going to be playing this week for sure, and that will hurt the Texans a lot.
The Texans haven’t been relying on Shorts as their main WR, of course. That honor has gone to DeAndre Hopkins who has surprised a lot of football fans by how well he’s been playing. He has averaging over 100 yards per game right now, and has 3 touchdowns. Last week, he had 157 yards as the Texans lost to Atlanta. If Mallett can keep connecting with him for passes, the loss of Shorts will be overcome, especially if Foster starts playing better at RB.
But if Andrew Luck does play, the story might be very different than what people have been expecting. Luck has not had the greatest season so far, but he is extremely talented. If Luck plays in top form, he will outperform the Texans with ease. This hasn’t happened yet so far, and its unlikely to happen so close to an injury, but there is a slight possibility that it could happen. Definitely keep an eye on Luck throughout the season for this reason. There’s been a ton of talk about Luck as MVP this year, and while he definitely doesn’t deserve that title yet, he very well could change things on a dime and start playing like everyone says he can.
The best part about this game is that there is so much uncertainty surrounding it. It’s impossible to tell what will happen, and that has made Thursday’s matchup even more looked forward to.
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Colts picture credit.
