Can CJ Stroud and the Texans better their unexpected success from a season ago? The next step is to go from upstart to elite, from hunter to hunted.
You get all the buzzy analogies. Texans ownership serious about making sure that their team could win well into the AFC playoffs. Houston spent an NFL-high $144.5 million in guaranteed money during free agency.
Cynthia Frelund, an analytics expert at NFL Network, recently predicted the win totals for all 32 teams. She based her formula on a mixture of stats, history and trends. It’s all numbers, with no gut feelings involved.
She believes the Texans will notch 10.3. That win total ranks third best in the AFC and would win the South Division. Houston is the defending South champion, but no one expected the second-worst team in the NFL in 2022 to have such a turnaround in 2023.
“It’s fun to have those expectations,” Texans owner Cal McNair told reporters at the NFL meetings. “We embrace them. Basically, we’re starting a new season, putting a new team together with DeMeco (Ryans), and they’re starting from scratch. So it’s exciting, but we got a lot of work to do.”
Conversely, Frelund put a lot of work into her predictions. She explained how she created the formula for her projections.
“Using the projected 53-man rosters as of May 14, I ran 150,000 simulations for all 272 regular-season games,” she wrote.
She also noted “remember, these simulations account for many contextualized data points that have been proven to correlate to wins and losses based on historical football games that were actually played.”
Houston Texans odds and projections for 2024
- Win Total: over 10.0 (+100)
- Make Playoffs: -200
- Win Division: +100
- Win Conference: +700
- Win Super Bowl: +1300
Frelund writes of the Texans:
“I was the most wrong about the Texans when I forecasted their win total last May, so I spent some extra time analyzing my mistakes and learning from them ahead of this year’s exercise. Jonathan Greenard was a big value player on the defensive front in 2023, and he not only outperformed my estimates of him, but earned a big new contract from the Vikings in March. I feel better about how to forecast free-agent addition Danielle Hunter this season. NGS shows he had the fourth-most pressures last season.
“Trading for Stefon Diggs and re-signing Dalton Schultz creates an awesome environment for 2023 Offensive Rookie of the Year C.J. Stroud to lead Houston to back-to-back AFC South titles. It also helps that the Texans’ schedule builds in terms of difficulty, so they should have have an opportunity to build chemistry among their new pieces and potentially get out to a fast start. The toughest section on their slate — a three-game stretch from Weeks 15-17 — comes right after their bye and includes a Christmas gift for us all: a matchup with the Ravens.”
Coach DeMeco Ryans is headed into his second season. He started his playing career with the Texans as a linebacker, so he knows defense. Bringing in Hunter, who had 16.5 sacks last season with the Vikings, was a huge pickup in free agency.
The Texans also made significant additions to the offense, trading for both receiver Stefon Diggs (Bills) and running back Joe Milton (Bengals). And they took care of players on the roster. Nico Collins got a pay bump that placed him amongst the top 10 highest-paid receivers in the NFL.
Check out predicted AFC playoff teams
Overall, Frelund and her formula predicted that the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs will top the AFC. She projects 10.9 wins. The Bengals, with a healthy Joe Burrow back in the lineup, come in second at 10.5 wins. Those are the only two teams ahead of the Texans.
The formula has a tie for fourth between the Dolphins and the Ravens at 10.2 wins a piece. The Bills are sixth at 10 wins, followed by the Jets at 9.6. Those are the seven playoff teams.
You can check out all of Frelund’s predictions here. And check out On3.com’s NFL coverage here.