Pro Football Focus is at it again, and this time the football scouting firm has projected the Houston Texans to finish with an 8-8 record.
It actually isn’t that far off from what odds-makers are predicting to happen with the Texans. According to BetMGM, Houston has -189 odds to win between 5-8 games, and +155 odds to win between 9-12 games. The under for 7.5 wins is -120, while the over for 7.5 wins is +100. For the Texans to get exactly seven wins, the odds are +300, and odds to get exactly eight wins are +275.
Pro Football Focus says they have simulated every game 10,000 times and used “the help of our PFF Elo rating system, our grades and some market data” to produce their win totals for the Texans, which is 7.9 wins. Round it up, and it’s eight wins, an 8-8 finish.
The Tennessee Titans are projected to win 9.2 games, according to PFF, and the Indianapolis Colts are projected to win 8.2 games. The Jacksonville Jaguars get a 6.2 win projection for 2020.
Without the bothersome decimals, that would have the Titans going 9-7 and winning the division, the Colts and Texans at 8-8 with possibly the 0.3 difference representing Indianapolis’ tiebreaker over Houston, and the Jaguars finishing 6-10.
Even though Houston is projected to go .500, it doesn’t mean they are out of the early playoff picture. Odds-makers have the Texans at +150 to make the postseason and -182 to fail to qualify. With an extra playoff team added per conference, the Texans could still qualify for the seventh and final playoff spot.
The Texans are playing first-place finishers on their schedule, but they are also slated to play the AFC North and NFC North and don’t travel any further west than the city of Houston this year. Eight wins should be the floor of what the Texans are able to achieve in 2020.
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