It gets tougher to write these when you are 0-3, but looking at the numbers can help us figure out what could happen on Sunday. There are two struggling football teams meeting again which could mean the resistible force against the movable object. However, the rankings that we see will at least give us some idea of what each team is thinking coming into Sunday.
Obviously, the main story is a struggling offense against a struggling defense and a good offense against a good defense. However, we can
break that down further by looking at the breakdown between rushing offense and passing offense along with rushing defense and passing defense. We are still early in the season, so some of these numbers may not mean anything when we get to week eighteen, but they are what we have right now.
Two weeks in a row the Texans are going against a bad defense. The Cowboys are 30th overall in yards allowed. They have surrendered 82 points which is 25th in the league in points allowed. This is a bad defense to be sure. However, even though the Texans are 14th in total yards gained they are 24th in points scored. That makes them one of the least efficient offenses in football.
How will the Cowboys offense attack the Texans?
At a certain point, you stop worrying about what other teams do well and look at what your team does well. The Cowboys have the most explosive receiver duo in football with Ceedee Lamb and George Pickens. Dak Prescrott is a top ten quarterback and some ambitious Prescott fans would say he is in the top five. At a certain point you stop worrying about what other teams do well and worry about what your team does well. The Cowboys pass the football as good as any team. They don’t run the ball well, so it really shouldn’t matter whether the Texans defend the run well or not. However, they happen to defend it well, so they have more than one reason to rely on their passing game.
What will the Cowboys defense plan to do to the Texans?
This one is easy. You shut down the run and make the Texans one-dimensional. Fortunately for the Texans, the Cowboys pass rush is the weakness of their defense. So, you have a bad defensive line against a bad offensive line. This will be the matchup of the season and it could very well decide which of these teams have a chance from this week forward. The Texans are likely out if they go to 0-4 and the Cowboys chances are limited if they go to 1-3.
What will the Texans offense do to the Cowboys defense?
How long do we have? There is what you plan to do and what you actually end up doing. The Texans keep telling everyone they are a running team and through three weeks they have been anything but. This has been going on for years as even when they had Joe Mixon they were not really a good running team. The important thing comes when a team finally realizes what their identity is. Maybe this will be the week that the Texans finally admit who they are and who they aren’t. I’m not sure if this will be the week. Maybe some heads will have to roll before they finally get the picture. This is not a running football team. The sooner they admit this the better off we are all going to be.
What will the Texans defense do to the Cowboys offense?
If the game goes according to plan then the Cowboys will be a one-dimensional football team. This feels like a game where there will be explosive plays on both sides. So, the winning team likely is the one that will have the most explosives in this matchup. Will the Texans generate more rurnovers and negative plays than the Cowboys offense produce explosives on the positive end? In week one they didn’t, but they have at least broken even the last two weeks, so there is reason to believe they will bust out and make enough big plays with an interception or sack fumble.
