This Has MASSIVE Implication For The Houston Texans...

This has massive implications for the Houston Texans as they head into a big week four matchup against the Dallas Cowboys. With this team having some players returning from injury, how does this affect them and can we finally get that big win? What's up ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Texans Digest. I'm your host as always, Isaac Estrada. Today I am joined by a very special guest, my good friend Jace Andrews over at Cowboys Digest. Jace, how are we feeling today? I'm feeling good. I'm definitely looking for both of us in need of a win here and looking at this matchup in a scary, scary way just because I've been at Cowboys for too long to understand what's going on. But I'm really excited to talk this out and, you know, kind of see and feel out how the Texans are looking. Yeah, absolutely. Both of these teams are very win-needy coming into week four. Cowboys sit at one and two on the season. Houston Texans still 0-3, still looking for that first win. We're going to dive right into it, Jace. So you can see the predictions right here. Cowboys obviously not favorited highly in this game. I was a little bit shocked to see this, Jace. I want to know your initial reactions to seeing that the Houston Texans were just very favorited for this game. Yeah, it's a little shocking, I'm going to be honest, because, like, the Cowboys are the team that has the win. The win is, you know, I'm not going to say it's over this fantastic team that they beat and that, you know, the losses come to the Ravens and the Giants. And you're thinking, OK, the Commanders look good, like they beat the Seahawks last week, but they also lost Gene Daniels in the game. We beat him. So, I don't know. It's just an interesting thing. I still think that the Cowboys should have been favored, or at least, I mean, they always say about 4 or 5 percent for home field advantage. So they're giving the Cowboys not only the home field advantage, the Texans, but also 3 extra percent or 2 extra percent behind it. So, I'm a little shocked, I'm going to be honest, but I definitely understand it given the injuries to the Cowboys, which we'll get into in a moment. Yeah, well, let's not waste any more time. Let's dive right into it. So, I want to bring this up first. So, this was the Dallas Injury Report update. This was today. Jace, tell us what we know about the Cowboys Injury Report and what we should be looking forward to. Yeah, I mean, the Cowboys are mangled by injuries. Their secondary, as a whole, is just in a bad spot. Malik Hooker, starting safety, he got injured in Week 1 and was out Week 2, out Week 3. Hopeless, he could be back here in Week 4. Looking like that's not going to be a possibility. Siobhan Rebel, one of the star cornerbacks, second-year guy out of Eastern Carolina, he got injured late last week in the Ravens game in Rio. So, you know, he's not been ruled out, but he's going to do this in practice today. We'll see what happens. Obviously, got a couple of guys on injured reserve. P.J. Locke went on injured reserve. Jalen Thompson, a safety injured reserve. We have so many people on IR, and the biggest thing is the secondary. You want to take a look at what they look like in the secondary? It's pretty bad because this is what is healthy right now. And I don't know that Malik Hooker is healthy, so that's one. Marquise Bell and Elijah Clark. Elijah Clark was a UDFA last year and was not great. Marquise Bell had the worst PFF of any defensive player last week in the NFL. It was horrible. Siobhan Rebel, obviously, he could be injured, he could be hurt. Then you have Derron Bland and Kalen Carson. I love Caleb Downs. I love Bland. There's a great spot. They also just signed a couple of guys to their practice squad. Safety Wanda Thomas and alongside cornerback Alex Austin for some extra help. And I really expect them to be called up in this game just because of the injuries to the secondary, but not really a good spot here for the Cowboys and the secondary, especially given, I know, the return of Niko Collins seems likely. That one's going to be a tough thing to guard. Yeah, absolutely. And you took the words right out of my mouth. I want to dive right into it right now. You had already said that Cowboys defense is banged up. Not only that, but we also got the update. This is from Aaron Wilson, big reporter on the Houston Texans. He said D'Amico Ryan says they are hopeful to get Niko Collins and Ed Engram back this week versus the Cowboys. Both of these guys have not played since week one. Chase, I don't know if you watched week one matchup against the Buffalo Bills. We were very close to pulling it off against the Bills. That offense was clicking on all cylinders and since Niko and Ed Engram have been out, Texans offense has been absolutely abysmal. So it is going to be very good to get them back. That on top of a defense in the Dallas Cowboys that is already struggling a little bit. You have pulled it up here. Defense that's already struggling. Do you think that this could be a wide open spot for the Texans offense to finally get rolling for the first time in the past few weeks? Unfortunately, yes. And I don't know if that comes from just the Cowboys defense being bad for the past, feels like, decade at this point. I mean, we had a decent one when we had De'Ron Blynn as the pick-six master and we had Trevon Diggs as a pick-six guy. That just, it's not there anymore. And Niko is obviously a very talented wide receiver. The big thing was last week, Zay Flowers was active and that changed the game. The reason that the Ravens won the game was because Zay Flowers was active. He caught the pass that gave them that one second left because the Cowboys just like to hurt me every single week. And so it's unfortunate that the Cowboys are in a banged up situation, but even if they weren't banged up, the second just hasn't been that good this year. I understand and saw what the Texans offense was capable of, matching the bills, kind of pound for pound in that one matchup. Not that it was on CJ Straub, but of course the late chance that he had, then kind of losing the ball there late on the fourth down. So it's a hard thing to kind of look at the Texans and see them being 0-3, but also look at the Cowboys and say, well, this is not a win guaranteed. And this is a team that can come in here and put points to the board quick, especially if it's back to reliance hitting, right? Not an RG anymore, it's back to reliance. Yeah, absolutely. And something I do want to talk about really quickly. So I had talked about this yesterday on Texans Digest. I don't know if you've seen the news, but David Montgomery, Woody Marks, the running backs for the Houston Texans have been absolutely just not been having luck as of late. The past two weeks, they have been not very good. This is what the Houston Chronicles had to say yesterday among running backs with at least 20 rushing attempts. Montgomery has been hit at or behind the lineup scrimmage 68% of his runs, the highest in the league. Woody Marks currently ranks at number three right now, Jace. He's at 59%. Obviously the Cowboys defense is banged up. Do you think that this is something that they could still take advantage of knowing how bad the Texans offensive line has been and seeing the struggles with Woody Marks and David Montgomery? Oh, absolutely. And you think about what the Cowboys have on their defensive front with Kenny Clark, Quentin Williams, not to mention Rashawn Gary and Donovan Ezraku, who have both been really solid. You also have Von Miller. I mean, he's only playing like 20 snaps per game, but he is still performing to a pretty high level. So I think that's a big kind of difference in the offensive line play there. What's funny enough is that the I mean, Javante Williams has been the main guy and he has 160 yards over the first couple of weeks. So it's just not been going well, but the difference, the Texans have been more offensive line problem. Like they haven't been about a block while he's getting hit behind the left scrimmage. Javante just hasn't been running well. He's getting to the line too much. He's getting the right blocks. He's just not running and he's getting tackled as soon as he gets back there. The linebackers are finding the hole and capitalizing on it, which obviously makes me scared to face Willie Anderson and Daniel Hunter. Yeah, absolutely. And I had talked about it in a has been absolutely phenomenal this year. And that's going to lead me into my next point. That's talking about this Dallas Cowboys offense. Jace, this Dallas Cowboys offense, I will say, has been carrying the heavy load the past few weeks last week against the Baltimore Ravens. I feel like that's what really kept them in the game, is this offense keep rolling early and often. What can you tell us about this offense? They're good. They're a really good offense and they kind of beat themselves last week. I really hate to say it, but they beat themselves. They had the ball at the two-yard line, could have gone down the field, could have scored that game. And instead, they were unable to score. They had Dak Prescott throw it out of the back of the end zone with seven seconds left, which of course led to the loss in there. And I keep honing on it because the offense, they've been good, but they have just not been to the level that you expect, especially when you think about those wide receivers right there, CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens. CeeDee's been fantastic this season and arguably one of the better wide receivers in the NFL thus far. Three touchdowns, he had two against Washington, obviously 300-plus yards. But meanwhile, you think about what this duo should do, and it's just not what you would look at and not what you want, because George Pickens is closer to the 150-yard range. And I'm very confident in this offense to get going, especially knowing that the running game is probably going to be off the table. So you can try and hopefully abuse a secondary that has, I'm not going to say struggled for the Texans, but definitely not been as good as you expected, given what the talent level has been. Jalen Petrie obviously, a guy, and Derek Stingley, those are guys that you really, really respect, but they just haven't been as good as you saw last year, I think is the biggest thing. So I'm hopeful that the wide receivers can get going, but the Cowboys, the one thing they haven't done is chunk plays. In week one, they had no plays of 20-plus yards against the Giants. In week two, they think they had one. Last week, they had a little more, so it's just about getting those chunk plays off the Texans defense. That is very, very good. Yeah, absolutely. But it's a very exciting matchup for the both of these teams headed into this contest. Jace, I want to talk about final score predictions. Obviously, you know I'm going to take the Houston Texans. What do you think the final score prediction is going to be for the Cowboys before I get into the Texans? Firstly, I think the Cowboys are going to put up 30 points. I think that's what they're doing. They've been pretty consistent putting up some offense, which I think is just too much for the Texans offense to muster up. So I'm going to say that it's going to be a 30-21 final, Cowboys winning this one. I think that this is a situation where the defense is still going to allow points, whatever it might be. But I do think the Cowboys are going to put up 30 points, and that to me just spells for a victory. Yeah, and you can see it right here. I have the Texans taking this one at 24-20 against the Dallas Cowboys. Nico Collins is coming back. I think that offensive line is going to be just a little bit better with Ed Ingram. I can definitely see this getting into a shootout. Both offenses are going to want to go early and often. It's going to be interesting to see how both of these offense combat the defenses, especially with the Dallas Cowboys already having a banged up defense, and with the Houston Texans having a pretty good defense. But Dallas Cowboys offense, you can never count them out. So these are our final score predictions. Let us know in the comments what you guys think, who you guys think are going to capitalize on this game, and both teams need a win very badly. Chase, thank you so much for joining today on Texans Digest, my friend. It was a blessing to have you. Go do your boy a favor, and go subscribe to Cowboys Digest while you're at it. Thank you, Chase. Peace out, man.