Matt Leinart Injury: Why T.J. Yates Will Be Successful for Houston Texans

The Houston Texans have suffered yet another injury to a starting QB (Matt Schaub and Matt Leinart) and now have fifth-round draft pick T.J. Yates as the starting QB.

For a lot of Texan fans, this is troubling news.

However, before we hit the panic button and yell "doom and gloom," let me try to show you a silver lining.

Schaub was not having a fantastic season. His numbers were pretty modest. The Texans were just 23rd in passing the football under Schaub.

He has just been really accurate and took care of the football.

Yates, while not very impressive Sunday (and I showed some frustration with his performance in my live blog), was some what accurate.He was 8-of-15 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, and, more importantly, he put up a goose egg in the interception category. That alone will ensure the Texans will have a chance in any game. 

In his senior year at North Carolina, he had a respectable 19-9 TD-INT ratio with a 66.8 completion percentage. 

Those two statistics are just what Houston needs.

The Texans do not need the second coming of Tom Brady to be successful.

Houston has been winning most games because it has the best defense in the NFL this season under new defensive coordinator Wade Phillips.

Oh, and this other guy named Arian Foster to hand the ball off to.

One other thing that gets me to think Yates is good enough to lead Houston to the playoffs—and maybe even winning a playoff game—is his performance at the end of the first half. 

After the game, Yates explained he was thrown into the game on a whim and had no chance to even warm up, much less think.

"I just played fast," Yates said.

He pretty much was too stunned to even think so he just played.

In the second half, it seemed he was thinking about it too much. He had a lot of double clutches and he struggled to get rid of the football and make plays.

However, Yates can only improve.

As far as the regular season is concerned, most of the work is already done. 

The Texans already have eight wins and they just need three more wins (maybe even just two) to make the playoffs and/or win the AFC South.

Any hope of a first seed is probably out the window.

The next two weeks are going to be painful. They host the Atlanta Falcons next week and then travel to Cincinnati. Both have very solid defenses and it will be interesting to see if Yates can play well enough to get Houston a win against either of those teams.

However, those two games are just going to serve as kind of tune-ups, if you will.

We will see some growing pains. Some bad QB play will occur and that may cost Houston one, if not both of those games.

However, the schedule after that gets significantly easier as Houston hosts Carolina and then travels to Indianapolis. Both of those games will be extremely important now. Those games will tell us if Houston can win with Yates. Head coach Gary Kubiak should be able to get Yates ready (enough) for those games to win both of them.

Those teams do not have a defense to write home about and Foster should have a field day with them.

Those two games alone gets Houston to ten wins and that should be enough to get Houston to the postseason for the first time in their franchise history.

P.S. Houston still has Andre Johnson.