Does Houston have a problem? Well, not the Colts’ one

For most NFL teams, losing not only their starting quarterback but also their top backup would represent a crisis of the highest magnitude. For example, look at the Indianapolis Colts, who have gone from a division champion in 2010 to the NFL’s worst team in 2011 thanks primarily to an injury to quarterback Peyton Manning.

However, their divisional rivals in Houston have lost not just their top quarterback, Matt Schaub, but also their primary backup, Matt Leinart, and they’ve still clinched a division championship and a playoff berth. Much of the Texans’ success came before Schaub went down, of course, but they still remain a team to be reckoned with, unlike Indianapolis. How has Houston avoided Indianapolis’ problems?

Well, for one thing, it certainly helps that Houston’s identity isn’t exclusively passing-focused. Sure, when everything was going well, Schaub was lighting up secondaries, but the Texans have also had a solid ground game over the last couple of seasons, thanks to the emergence of Arian Foster. Even their once-maligned defense has become an area of strength in 2011, with former Dallas Cowboys’ coach Wade Phillips doing a masterful job of revamping it as defensive coordinator and crafty additions like cornerback Johnathan Joseph making substantial impacts.

Houston currently leads the league in fewest total yards allowed, conceding just 274.9 per game. If everyone’s healthy, the Texans are probably still a reasonably offense-focused and pass-focused team, but they have enough strength elsewhere that it isn’t all about the aerial offense.

By contrast, the Colts have almost exclusively been a passing team. They’ve been so good through the air that they’ve racked up divisional championships and even made a run to the Super Bowl in the 2009-10 season (where they lost to New Orleans), but they’ve always had notable deficiencies in the ground game and on the defensive side of the ball. As long as Manning was healthy, those deficits were largely papered over. With him gone, the Colts have been exposed as a team that doesn’t have their greatest strength of throwing the ball and doesn’t have anything else to compensate for their glaring weaknesses.

It’s also notable that the Texans’ downgrade at quarterback hasn’t been as steep as the Colts’. With Manning out, Indianapolis went to Curtis Painter, who continues to make observers wonder every week how he still has an NFL job. He’s got nice hair, but his game is completely ugly. Leinart himself didn’t carry a ton of promise, as his Heisman Trophy-winning campaign at USC has long since been overshadowed by mediocre showings at several NFL stops, but he slotted into the Texans’ quarterback job perfectly after Schaub went down.

Things looked like they might get worse from there as Leinart himself was injured in Week 12. That forced the Texans to go to T.J. Yates, a rather anonymous rookie quarterback out of North Carolina who only attended last year’s NFL combine as a camp arm to throw passes to receivers.

Yates impressed enough there for Houston to draft him in the fifth round last year, though, and that move has paid off in spades; when Leinart midway through a game against Jacksonville in Week 12, Yates stepped in to guide the Texans to a win, and the team followed that up with victories over Atlanta and Cincinnati, with Yates playing a crucial role in both wins.

Yates’ stats certainly aren’t anything to write home about, but he has been better than Painter in just about every category: completion percentage (54.8 percent to 54.3 percent), touchdown/interception ratio (3:1 versus 6:9) and quarterback rating (82.3 to 66.6). In fact, that’s a rather appropriate quarterback rating for Painter, as his play probably is approved of by world-destroying beasts and few others.

It goes to show that time and preparation aren’t always the most crucial things in the world; you’d probably have bet on a college quarterback who apprenticed for years under Peyton Manning and was the confirmed starter at the beginning of the year over a camp arm from the combine thrown into the fire midseason following injuries to the top two quarterbacks, but you’d have been wrong.

Even if Yates can’t keep up this impressive start, don’t write the Texans off just yet. They have a couple of veteran quarterbacks waiting in the wings in Jake Delhomme and Jeff Garcia, and their powerful Foster-led rushing game and dominant defense mean that they don’t necessarily need massive production through the air. 

Moreover, this team’s found ways to succeed and overachieve despite the odds. That’s a remarkable change in Houston, where the narrative for years has been about talented teams that still found ways to lose. This year, the Texans did lose some of that talent with the injury to Schaub, but unlike the Colts, they’ve proved that they’re about more than just their starting quarterback. Their 2011 season so far has been amazing, and they might be able to write an even more incredible ending.