Written by AccuScore Staff
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Houston Texans Quarterback Carousel
All of us had a chance to take a closer look to the competition of the starting quarterback job of the Houston Texans via HBO Hard Knocks. When the season started, the winner was Brian Hoyer, but he got benched after the first game. Ryan Mallett took over for few games, but Hoyer returned to the starting spot again in week 6. As Houston is 2-5, neither of these quarterbacks have been able to meet expectations or provide stability to the offense that is down its biggest star in Adrian Foster, who is out for remainder of the season.
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The Texans released Mallet on Tuesday and signed a familiar face, T.J.Yates, to backup Hoyer. Yates' career in Houston, 2011-2013, wasn’t anything to write home about, but will he provide the answer to Houston’s QB problems?
Accuscore has simulated Houston’s next game against Tennessee 10,000 times with Hoyer as a starting QB and also with Yates starting to compare the two. Based on the results, Yates offers little to the Texans' offense. Also, the schedule provides a critical game between two teams with 5 losses, which is not the place to try a QB from the free agent pool.
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On Sunday, Hoyer will give Texans good chance to win this game with 62% probability. We expect him to throw over 250 yards and have 2-1 TD-INT ratio.
If we set Yates start on Sunday, this game becomes 50-50 contest between these teams. The spread is also changing 4 points towards Tennessee, if Hoyer will be on the bench. His lack of experience from this season and recorded inconsistency from the past are not the way to improve the Texans' offense. He has turned the ball over 13 times in his NFL career with 170 attempts. 7.6% of his attempts have resulted in turnovers compared to Hoyer at 3.4% and top players like Aaron Rodgers at well below 3%.
According to AccuScore, the Texans would get the best out of their current roster by putting all their support behind Hoyer. On Sunday it should be enough for a win against Tennessee, at least.