This is my heavily biased (criticism and debate is welcome, but not the first without the second) preview of the upcoming matchup between the Colts and the texans that will take place on Sunday, the 23rd:

First off, let's address the history between the two teams. The Colts and texans have faced off a total of ten times over the last five seasons, so twice each year, which makes since seeing how they are in the same division. The Colts have won 9 of those 10 games, and their only lossof the series was by a mere 3 points (the patriots won each of their 3 Super Bowls titles by only 3 points, which is sad when you consider that they were cheating.) During this series the Colts have put up a total of exactly 300 points, thus averaging 30 per game. On the other hand the texans have only managed to average 16 points per game. So the Colts nearly double the texans in points. Also individually the Colts have faired pretty well; Peyton Manning throwing for a total of 2708 yards, 25 touchdowns and only 4 interceptions. Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne have 61 receptions for 805 yards and 52 receptions for 676 yards respectively, and each has 5 TD receptions. While the texans don't even have anyone on their roster whose been with the team long enough to compile note-worthy statistics in their appearances against the Colts. I might have felt obliged to mention andre johnson, the texans primary receiver if ESPN.com didn't have his status listed as "out" for this week's game due to a knee injury. The Colts most likely player to miss the game is Rob Morris, their starting left outside linebacker, ESPN him listed as "Questionable" because of an abdominal injury, but also said that he is "optimistic" about playing in this game. Without johnson in the texans lineup, they are left with a wide receiver core containing four receivers who combine for a total of only 15 CAREER touchdowns receptions. To put that in perspective the Colts have Dallas Clark and Bryan Fletcher listed as their first and third tight ends on their depth chart, and those two together have a total of 20 career touchdown receptions... Four wide receivers compared to three tight ends, and the tight ends have 4 more career touchdown receptions? Ouch. So this is where you say, but the Colts have Peyton Manning of course they have a good passing game, but what about their running game? Well, Joseph Addai has 199 rush yards with 2 TDs over the past two games and ahman green has 144 yards and a single touchdown. Also, the Colts second running back, Kenton Keith is averaging 5.7 yards per carry while the texans' number two back, ron dayne is averaging only 2.5 yards per carry. On defense the texans have an impressive young lineup featuring the rookie defensive tackle, amobi okoye, the second year defensive end, mario williams, second year linebacker, demeco ryans, fourth year safety, michael boulware, and fourth year corner, dunta robinson. The last two, boulware and robinson are an impressive young defensive back duo, each having 11 career interceptions. Only 1 of those 22 interceptions, courtesy mr. robinson, has come against Peyton Manning however, and with it being his first year on the team, boulware has only faced Manning and his Colts one time. Nonetheless, these two and their fellow DBs should be no match for Peyton Manning and his high-powered offense, because even if okoye and williams can completely dominate Joseph Addai and on the slim chance that robinson can shut down Marvin Harrison one-on-one (fat chance) then the texans would have the luxury pulling boulware further over to help on Reggie Wayne, and if that happened to in turn shut down Wayne (again, fat chance) that "unfortunately" (for the texans) leaves Dallas Clark, who had a total of 21 for 317 yards in the Colts' 4 playoff games last year in which they faced arguably the three toughest defenses in the league: the ravens, patriots, bears which includes arguably the two best linebackers (middle linebackers at least) in the NFL, being ray lewis and brian urlacher, along with other note-worthy linebackers, such as lance briggs, bart scott, adalius thomas, rosevelt colvin, tedy bruschi, and mike vrabel. So unless demeco ryans fairs better than and of the before mentioned then Clark should be left to have a hay-day unless of course demeco ryans can cover him man-to-man (once again, fat chance) in which case we might just get to see the rookie have his break-out game. Anthony Gonzalez would be left with virtually nobody covering him, and would have the best player ever to play the game throwing to him, what more could somebody ask for? How about Ben Utecht being left to have a better game than his week 10 game against the bills in 2006? And maybe Aaron Moorehead can catch another touchdown pass like he did for his only career touchdown, and who was that against? Oh, the texans? Right, so I think that leaves us to conclude that there is no possible way that the texans will be stopping the Colts offense, so let's see if their offense will be able to score enough points to keep up. Well, without andre johnson they still have weapons like... *cricket cricket*... hmm... well they have... hmm... ahman green has had a good career... when he was with brett favre... and matt schuab is kinda like brett fa... nope... um... I guess their tight end, owen daniels has potential... to carry the team...? Okay, point proven. The Colts could basically just stick Bob Sanders, and Dwight Freeney out there, with nine members from one of Indianapolis' local girl scout groups (or even worse: the browns defense) and that would probably hold up well enough to let the Peyton & Co. to carry the team to victory. So I'm sure that with guys like Gary Brackett, Robert Mathis, Raheem Brock, Antoine Bethea, Marlin Jackson, Kelvin Hayden, Freddy Keiaho, Ed Johnson, and hopefully Rob Morris, they should be able to handle the situation just fine. This leaves only one part of the game left: special teams. By deductive reasoning we should see that the texans must win this game on special teams if they intend to win at all. Let's start by comparing the returners: The Colts use second year player, T.J. Rushing. This year he has returned 4 kicks for 106 yards and 4 punts for 34 yards. The texans use jerome mathis for kick returns, which he has returned 4 of for 87 yards and they use jacoby jones for punt returns and he has 46 yards on 6 returns. So the total for the Colts is 140 yards on 8 returns, thus, averaging 17.5 yards per return while the texans totaled 133 yards on 10 returns, averaging out to be 13.3 yards per return. Okay, well that's close enough for the texans to still have some hope. Let's talk about the punters. The Colts have Hunter Smith, who on 7 punts this season has totaled 294 yards. The texans put matt turk out there to punt and he has 361 yards on 8 attempts. Now we can figure out that the Colts average 42 yards per punt while the texans average just over 45 yards per punt. Wait... what? That means the texans actually have a chance! I'm sure that the punting balances out the difference in the return stats (neglecting the fact that one doesn't have to punt as far if they have better field position.) Now the the texans just have to have a kicker who's so much better than the Colt's kicker that he can completely balance out the rest of the game in it's entirety. Well, the texans' kicker is kris brown. The rapper? No, the 9-year vet, nebraska grad, who has 776 career points and a 76.7 FG% and made it to the AFC Conference game once! Who's the Colts kicker again? Oh, you know only one of the best kickers ever. Adam Vinatieri, the 12 year vet, graduated from a place above nebraska, and has 1290 career points, an 82.5 FG%, and has been in 5 Super Bowls, winning 4 rings (and one was even legit) in the process and three of the four wouldn't have been won without him. Plus, on top of all that he pulled a reverse anakin skywalker and switched from the dark side to the light side last year when he became a member of the COLTS! So when we tally up the points (one for each of the 3 main parts of the game) it looks like this: Colts- 2.67 (offense, defense, returning, and kicking) , texans- 0.33 (punting) giving us the easy conclusion that the Colts are going to destroy the texans, especially because they're lucky that those points weren't weighted. Finally, we'll look at a few basics. The coaching: The Colts have Tony Dungy, who basically invented the Tampa 2 defense, has won a Super Bowl as both a head coach and as a player, and has a regular season record of 116-62 (.652) as a head coach with a post season record of 9-8 (.529) while the texans have gary kubiak who is only in his second year as a head coach and is 8-10 (.444) with no playoff appearances. So the coaching goes to the Colts as well. Also, if you look at the last nine non-preseason games (dating back to last season) the Colts are 8-1 and the texans are 5-4. Once again, a tip of the hat to the Colts. The texans did happen to win the last meeting between the two teams but it was only by three points, plus it's hard to beat a team twice in a row, especially a team like the Colts. The only thing left is that the texans have home field advantage, but there's no way that's enough to balance out everything else. I went on forever and didn't even get into a quarterback comparison which wouldn't have even been humane to put poor schuab up against Peyton. But don't worry, when the Colts play the pats I will most definitely have an all-out "Peyton Manning is God" tangent to go on, if not sooner than that. Now, with all that said I will give my prediction for the score of the game: 31 to 17 with the Colts winning, obviously.

I would also like to thank ESPN.com as well as NFL.com for providing my brain with so much information.