The Houston Texans handled business last weekend, dismantling the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Wild Card round and setting up a road matchup against the New England Patriots this Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
C.J. Stroud came out sharp early, but the game started to slip a bit as turnovers crept in \u2014 an interception and multiple fumbles that could\u2019ve swung momentum. Even with those mistakes, Houston still cruised to a 24-point win, largely thanks to a dominant defensive performance.<\/p>\n
That margin for error won\u2019t exist this week. New England presents a much tougher challenge, and if the Texans continue turning the ball over, it\u2019s hard to see them completely shutting down Drake Maye \u2014 who has an MVP-caliber case this season.<\/p>\n
Here is a look at Thursday\u2019s injury report:<\/p>\n
-WR Justin Watson (Concussion)<\/p>\n
-WR Nico Collins (Concussion)<\/p>\n
-DT Sheldon Rankins (Elbow)<\/p>\n
-LT Aireontae Ersery (Thumb)<\/p>\n
-LB Azeez Al-Shaair (Knee)<\/p>\n
-CB Kamari Lassiter (Knee \/ Ankle)<\/p>\n
Houston remains in good shape health-wise, even with wide receiver Nico Collins expected to miss the game. In his absence, the Iowa State trio \u2014 along with Christian Kirk \u2014 will need to carry a larger share of the offensive workload.<\/p>\n
Rookie running back Woody Marks broke out last week, topping 100 yards on the ground. If that production carries over, it could go a long way toward offsetting Collins\u2019 absence and keeping the Texans offense on schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Texans handled business last weekend, dismantling the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Wild Card round and setting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2056],"tags":[7,221,253,60120,2368,6,222],"class_list":{"0":"post-680728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-texans","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-texans","11":"tag-houston-texans-injuries","12":"tag-houstontexans","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-texans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115902398496841512","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}