AFC South Changes

Texans defense looked very good Sunday.

I'm following up on a comment made by bluegirl in the here. It's interesting to see how teams in the AFC South have undergone nearly complete makeovers and yet the results could very well turn out the same as they have the last few years. Take Jacksonville for example. They jettisoned Byron Cottage Cheese Legs, got a ton of healthy defensive players back, and have a second year Maurice Jones-Drew. Instead of coming out at home and making a statement, they surrender 282 rushing yards to the Titans and get embarrassed at home despite a very good performance by QB David Garrard. Amazing.

Tennessee didn't look much better folks. Yes, they raped the Jags with their rushing attack, but the game was made close by the utterly putrid play of QB Vince Young who still can't figure out how to throw the football. 11-18 for 78 yards, an INT, and a lost fumble; Good God that's bad. The guy also ran 11 times for 22 yards and a score. That's 2 yards a carry folks. That means Vince Young dropped back in the pocket 29 times and ran as much as he completed. Yet, Vince will get called a "winner" even though the team won in spite of him Sunday rather than because of him. Vince Young has shown little to zero improvement over last year in terms of throwing the football accurately. He takes off running after seeing his first read covered, essentially giving up on the play before it's even started. Cue the apologists.

Then, there's Houston. I think their defense looked great Sunday. But, they were playing the Chiefs, and if you watched HBO's Hard Knocks this pre-season you knew the Chefs would be cooking up a bad brew this year. Herm Edwards is a joke of a coach. That team has no balance. No discipline. No accountability. No chance. The Texans defense looked very sharp though. However, their offense still looked pretty much the same. Schaub looks more comfortable than Carr ever did, but that Texans o-line is still dreadful. Schaub was sacked twice and pressured numerous times. He's certainly more mobile than Carr and he looks more comfortable on the bootlegs, but if you have to bootleg your QB out in order to protect him because your o-line stinks, you are in for a long season. Schaub did look good throwing that deep pass to Andre Johnson.

It's early, but things just don't look all that different from this end folks. The Colts should, and I stress should, annihilate this division. Whether they will or not is a different story. They gave away three division games last year when they were clearly better than the teams they lost to. This coming Sunday is when payback comes to Tennessee. The three away division games are circled on my calendar. The Colts lost all three away games in the AFC South last year. That cannot happen this year.