Official Texans vs. Raiders Playoff Game Thread, 1/07/2017

[Keith]

Yeah, I was there... ya miss some things without the TV feed.

Originally Posted by chuck

I'll just leave it to the crack reporters covering the Texans beat to suss that out.

Speaking of, I've been rambling on the ItB twitter timeline tonight because the ESPN report during the game indicated J.J. Watt had been cleared last week for football activities. I had not heard that, maybe I missed it. Or maybe the Texans beat didn't do much to report it.

And maybe that's because it doesn't matter (Brian, AFC South champs, Brian). The Texans already burned their IR-DFR status on Brennan Scarlett. But interestlingly, they only burned the status on Scarlett in mid-December, fairly recently. No knock intended on Scarlett - with Simon's status still iffy, the extra LB is great and Scarlett has some potential - but having Watt available to dress and maybe even play a couple snaps in a deep playoff run might have been really, really helpful.

This is only the third time in franchise history the team has made it this deep. Us cynical posters can say this team has no shot at winning - because we've watched this team for 18 weeks now - but nothing should be taken for granted. Any given Sunday stuff.

But Watt won't be playing next week. And if miracles occur, he won't play the conference championship or the Super Bowl, which btw is in Houston. Look, again, Scarlett's great to have back, but we're talking about the former DPOY here... even if Watt has lost muscle and is not 100%, even if it is just a couple key downs, even if it was something of a decoy, having Watt on the field each successive week from here on out probably has a bigger impact than having Scarlett doing the same.