Jets Have Good Chance to Get Well in Houston

The Jets are going to Houston to play a first-place team this weekend, albeit one with a losing record. The season has been a roller coaster for the Texans, who started off badly, with losses in four of their first five games, then came on strong, winning three of the last four.

Yes, it’s easy to get well when you’re facing off against the likes of Jacksonville, Miami and Tennessee, as Houston did in weeks 6 through 8. However, last Monday night, the Texans took down the previously-undefeated Bengals, proving that they can play -- and that, for all the talk that Andy Dalton has suddenly become Aaron Rodgers (and, of course, that Rodgers has suddenly regressed into Dalton), we might not want to get him fitted for a yellow blazer just yet.

If Houston is a much-improved squad, though, they’re also a much-injured one. QB Brian Hoyer, who coach Bill O’Brien kept on a yo-yo through the first half of the season, continuing to hope against hope that Ryan Mallett would stop acting like a 7-year-old (and a particularly immature one at that), is out this week after suffering a concussion in the Cincy contest. Like the Jets’ own Ryan Fitzpatrick in 2014, Hoyer seems to have found new life in Texas, cutting down on INTs and making smart plays. Without him, though, and with Mallett cut from the team and apparently taking a timeout in his room, O’Brien is turning to fifth-year pro T.J. Yates.

Yates, who, it’s been reported, has been in witness protection since injuries forced him into the starting lineup for the Texans’ postseason run during his rookie year, is the epitome of nothing special. If Hoyer is a game manager, Yates is a game intern. And unfortunately for him, several key co-workers have called in sick. Arian Foster, one of the NFL’s best running backs over the past decade, is out for the rest of the campaign with a torn Achilles. WR DeAndre Hopkins, who’s merely been phenomenal this year, is expected to play on Sunday, but has been sidelined this week with an ailing knee. Hopkins has 71 catches through nine games. No other Texans receiver has even 30.

Unfortunately for Gang Green, J.J. Watt is alive and well. The defensive lineman/cyborg leads a unit that has clamped down over the past few weeks after essentially playing like Watt and 10 other guys who expected him to make every play (he nearly did). Houston surrendered 28 points a game through their first seven, but only a total of 12 in the past two weeks.

And while the Jets have already ceded their division to the Pats, the Texans are looking at a pathetic AFC South as theirs for the taking. They’ve got plenty to play for.

The visitors, meanwhile, are sorely in need of the type of invigoration Houston has experienced - especially on D. Lining up against Yates, a Foster-less run game and a banged-up Hopkins, if this isn’t the time for it, then what is? 

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