Texans Are Finally in the Driver's Seat of the Tumultuous AFC South

There will only be one true winner in the AFC South when the 2015 regular season ends, and it won’t be a team. It will be a feeling that comes with the worst kind of mental and physical pain: misery.

Sunday the claws of misery clutched the Houston Texans again, even during an afternoon when they defeated the Indianapolis Colts, delivering a hammerfisted blow to their division rival’s playoff hopes.

The Texans are now 7-7—a record that sadly gives them control over both the AFC South and, by extension, the potential to host one home playoff game. So we’re left to ponder an overarching question hovering around the NFL’s clown-car division.

Can any AFC South team establish sustained competence for even a few weeks? And can that team now be the Texans, who control their playoff fate?

Under normal circumstances, it would be easy—or at least easier—to hop aboard the chugging Texans bandwagon because they have the ingredients needed to hide poor quarterback play.

That starts with a rushing offense we can either describe as powerful or adequate, depending on the week. The Texans are averaging 103.1 rushing yards per game, though only 3.6 per carry. But running back Alfred Blue posted 107 yards on the ground Sunday—his second 100-plus-yard game this season.

His afternoon included a new personal-best 41-yard run, as Kelsey Wingert of KALBtv5 pointed out:

If the Texans' rushing offense can maintain even that satisfactory production, hope for success over the final two weeks should be alive and well, right?

When a decent rushing offense is combined with Houston’s defense, which allowed only 190 yards Sunday, concerns over mediocre quarterback play should start to fade. The Texans have now won four of their past six games, a stretch in which their defense has given up an average of only 16 points per week.

That's why Texans fans would be free to embrace the warmth of playoff optimism if they could rely on getting even mediocre quarterback play. But there’s mediocre, and then there’s Brandon Weeden. The Houston Chronicle's John McClain noted the Texans' need to sign another quarterback:

At quarterback, the cost of a crucial win over Indianapolis was steep.

The Texans entered Week 15 with uncertainty clouding Brian Hoyer’s short-term future. He sat out due to a concussion, and as ESPN’s Ed Werder reported Tuesday, there isn’t much optimism for an immediate return.

Hoyer seemingly has reached the point where his personal well-being takes priority over a football game. He’s 30 years old and has absorbed plenty of hits during a journeyman career. Being cautious with his next step is wise.

Even when healthy, Hoyer was at best a bottom-tier quarterback, but he could connect with all-planet wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins enough to support his defense and backfield. Behind him, T.J. Yates was a downgrade, though to a lesser extent the same description could be applied.

The Texans won during Yates' other start this season, when he completed only 47.1 percent of his passes against the New York Jets but still averaged a serviceable 6.7 yards per attempt while throwing two touchdowns.

Here’s where the unique misery of AFC South football is seen in full force. Yates reportedly suffered a torn ACL, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, after falling awkwardly at the end of a second-quarter scramble Sunday.

In their search for quarterback play that can generously be described as somewhat passable, the Texans turn to Weeden, who’s already been discarded once this season after failing to produce respectable results.

As author Jeff Pearlman quipped, tricking yourself into believing in the Texans is becoming increasingly difficult with each quarterback injury:

Let’s return to our original question—the one about finding sustained success in a division that could be won with an 8-8 record.

The Texans need only one more win and a Colts loss to clinch their division. A golden path lays ahead of them with games against the cellar-dwelling Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars—two teams with a combined record of 8-20. The quality of the opponent matters less, however, when Weeden is under center.

For the second straight season, Texans head coach Bill O’Brien has been forced to play four quarterbacks. Publicly, he’s praised his team’s drive to push through those injuries.

“I love coaching this team,” O’Brien said during his postgame press conference Sunday, per Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle. “They’re tough; they’re resilient. Very, very proud of this team.”

But privately he’s cursing a familiar fate.

If the Weeden who led his offense to 16 points while spearheading a 90-yard drive for the go-ahead touchdown Sunday surfaces again going forward, then the Texans can seal up their third division title.

The larger sample size we have of Weeden says that was a mirage. He’s fared much better as an in-game replacement, and he threw only one touchdown pass over his three starts earlier this season for the Dallas Cowboys. In 2014 he produced just 5.6 yards per attempt during his lone start, and overall he has a career completion percentage of 57.8.

That’s not the resume of someone who can be trusted to secure a division championship. Instead, those numbers reflect exactly what Weeden is: a glass-case emergency option who has been handed the keys to a playoff run, and the Texans are in for a white-knuckle ride.