NFL Thursday - Texans continue to run to Super Bowl

This Thursday night game sees a divisional game in the AFC South between the Indianapolis Colts who've won the division 7 times in 8 years against the Houston Texans who've never even made the playoffs until this year. In their short existence the Texans have never won a game here in Indianapolis but this has to be their best ever chance as the Colts have won just once all year & the Texans have the league's 2nd best defense up against Indianapolis's 2nd worst in the league offense. The only positive for the Colts is that they won last time out to avoid going winless but that was thanks to playing against the Titans who insisted on playing quarterback Matt Hasselbeck even though he was injured, they paid the price as he put in his worst performance of the season to hand the Colts the win.

 (Double Trouble - the Texans' rushers Ben Tate & Arian Foster can terrorise the Colts defense)

We were wholly against the Colts on Sunday & although we were wrong there that was a freak performance with the Titans putting in an abject display & the Texans really are starting to become an excellent team. Houston have missed arguably the league's best receiver in Andre Johnson for virtually the whole season, their defensive star Mario Williams for the year & first choice quarterback Matt Schaub from week 10 as well as his backup Matt Leinart - they've still powered on thanks to some excellent defensive schemes, their ace running game (ranked 2nd) & rookies stepping up to the mark with J.J. Watt being great in defense & T.J. Yates doing a stellar job at quarterback. The Colts are ranked 28th at defending the run  they shouldn't be able to cope with superstar running back Arian Foster especially with his game being backed up by Ben Tate who's making his first active seaosn in the NFL, after being injured during his rookie year, a memorable one with 846 rushing yards at a very nice average of 5.5 yards a time. Even more crucial to the win will be the Texans defense, they've been excellent so far & should have little trouble with the Colts third string QB Dan Orlovsky who threw for a paltry 82 yards in that win against Tennessee, running back Donald Brown had a career high game but that was helped by some awful missed tackles that let him score an 80 yard touchdown run - those tackles would not have been missed by the organised Texans defense.

(Dan Orlovsky & the mediocre Colts' offense will give the great Texans defense little to worry about)

Looking at the game overall it seems as though the Texans should have no problem shutting down the Colts' offense, before last week's loss to the high scoring Panthers they hadn't let any team score more than 19 points in their last 7 games & the 10/11 on offer for the toothless Colts to score under 17 points is an outstanding bet. Both sides will run the ball a lot meaning the clock will keep ticking & the total points at 40 looks a shade on the high side, 5 of the Colts last 7 have been 40 points or under & 3 of the Texans last 4 (since Schaub was injured) have been under with the only one going over being 41 points, take under 40 total points at 10/11. We really would be shocked to see this being a high scoring encounter but we still like the look of the Texans, rather than taking the short odds for them to win we think a small bet on them to win by 1-6 points at 4/1 offers some real value, they'll eb happy to keep sneaking them & keeping towards the top of the playoff seedings where we then hope they can bring in our 25/1 pre-season tip.

Selections:
Houston Texans to beat Indianapolis Colts by 1-6 points at 4/1 (Stan James)
Total Indianapolis points to be under 17 at 10/11 (general)
Total game points to be under 40 at 10/11 (general)