Texans vs. Bears Predictions | Opta Analyst

C.J. Stroud emerged as the NFL’s latest great young quarterback in 2023.

Caleb Williams is expected to be the next in line, even if the early returns didn’t quite live up to the advance hype.

One team is hoping there’s more symmetry between the two recent premium draft picks, both of whom will make their Sunday Night Football debuts in this week’s clash between Stroud’s Houston Texans and Williams’ Chicago Bears.

It’s NBC’s first SNF regular-season visit to Houston’s NRG Stadium since 2019, which also happens to be the first of five consecutive non-winning seasons the Bears have endured since a 12-4 campaign that turned out to be an outlier in a decade’s worth of mostly futile results from one of the NFL’s most historic franchises.

Optimism is beginning to abound in 2024, however, due to the selection of the former Heisman Trophy winner Williams with this year’s No. 1 overall choice in the draft, plus the additions of a few proven veteran pieces to an offense that too often held back a usually solid defense during Chicago’s 7-10 run of last season.

And with their most storied rival presumably weakened by an early season injury to its most important player, the door may be open for the Bears to supplant the Green Bay Packers as the second-best team in an NFC North division where the Detroit Lions look like a clear-cut No. 1.

Our projection model isn’t too bearish on Chicago, giving it a reasonable chance to reach the playoffs following last week’s very unconventional 24-17 season-opening win over the Tennessee Titans.

Williams’ NFL debut didn’t exactly go to plan, but the Bears got touchdowns on both defense and special teams to overcome the ex-USC superstar’s rather ugly 14-of-29, 93-yard passing display as well as a 17-0 first-half deficit.

How rare is that, you might ask? Well, it’s only the third time in NFL history a team has won after trailing by 17 or more points without scoring an offensive touchdown in a game.

The Bears have done it before, however, having rallied for a 24-23 victory over the Arizona Cardinals back in 2006 – an outcome best known for giving us one of the most epic postgame tirades in all of professional sports.

And just for an interesting side note, that 2006 season just happened to be the last time the Bears reached the Super Bowl.

As for the Texans, it looks like they are who we thought they were based on their Week 1 performance. There were a few defensive lapses from our preseason pick to repeat as AFC South champions, but DeMeco Ryans’ team got another sharp effort from Stroud and immediate contributions from two of its most notable newcomers to come away with a hard-earned 29-27 road win over the division-rival Indianapolis Colts.

Four-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Stefon Diggs caught two touchdown passes from Stroud in his first Texans game, while former Cincinnati Bengal Joe Mixon sparked the run game with one of the best first games by a running back with a new team this century by racking up 159 rushing yards and a touchdown on 30 carries.

MOST RUSHING YARDS IN A TEAM DEBUT (SINCE 2000)

• 220 – Michael Turner, Atlanta Falcons (vs. Detroit Lions, 2008)
• 167 – C.J. Anderson, Los Angeles Rams (vs. Arizona Cardinals, 2018)
• 159 – Joe Mixon, Houston Texans (vs. Indianapolis Colts, 2024)
• 148 – Kareem Hunt, Kansas City Chiefs (vs. New England Patriots, 2017)
• 148 – Carnell Williams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (vs. Minnesota Vikings, 2005)
• 148 – Clinton Ports, Washington (vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 2004)

To little surprise, the public has thrown its support behind the more established team and quarterback in this primetime showdown, as the Texans are a 6.5-point favorite as of Friday after opening at minus-5.0. And our model also views Houston as the most likely winner, as it gives the Bears less than a 30% chance of beginning the Williams era 2-0.

Then again, the Titans had an over 90% probability of winning last week according to our projections when up 14 points in the third quarter, before they let the Bears off the hook.

According to SmartRatings, this is the second-ranked game on Sunday-Monday portion of the Week 2 slate behind only Sunday’s Cincinnati Bengals-Kansas City Chiefs tilt. The excitement model is powered by complex algorithms that are predicated upon six primary variables: pace, parity, novelty, momentum, context and social buzz.

So stay tuned.

The Bears are great at causing turnovers. The Texans are great at avoiding them.

Chicago’s opportunistic defense forced three fourth-quarter turnovers against the Titans, and the Bears needed every one of them along with a blocked punt reserve safety Jonathan Owens returned for a touchdown in the third quarter that completely shifted the game’s momentum.

The Bears picked up right where they left off from the second half of last season, as no team generated takeaways at a higher rate over the final eight weeks.

PCT. OF OPP. DRIVES RESULTING IN TOs (WEEKS 11-18, 2023)

1. Chicago Bears (22.5%)
2. New York Giants (22.0%)
3. Baltimore Ravens (20.0%)
4. Miami Dolphins (19.1%)
5. Buffalo Bills (18.7%)

Creating turnovers isn’t just a signature component of Matt Eberflus’ unit, it’s also an essential one for a team that’s 6-3 since the start of last season when getting two or more takeaways and 2-7 when having one or fewer.

And it’s actually the only thing the Bears did really well on defense in 2023. The pass rush was mostly lousy, as Chicago ranked 29th in pressure rate at 32.9% (though that number did climb slightly to 34.9% following the midseason pickup of team sack leader Montez Sweat).

And even with a true shutdown cornerback on the roster in Jaylon Johnson, the Bears still allowed an open receiver on 79.5% of opponent pass attempts – a rate below the league average of 78.3%.

Chicago isn’t drawing the most favorable of matchups here either, as the Texans simply don’t turn the ball over. Their 14 giveaways during the 2023 regular season were the fewest in the NFL, and there weren’t any against the Colts last week.

Stroud had the lowest interception percentage (1.0) of any qualified quarterback (250 or more attempts) during his NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year campaign of 2023, though his pickable pass percentage of 2.96 was closer to good than elite. And the offense has added a lead runner who excels in ball security in Mixon, who hasn’t been charged with a fumble since 2021 and has just three in over 1,800 touches over the last six-plus seasons.

As you can see, the Bears have quite a chore on their hands, and one that’s even more magnified considering last week’s offensive struggles. It’s crucial for Chicago to make this a low-scoring affair, as the Texans are 9-0 (including playoff games) in Stroud starts when scoring 22 or more points and 0-5 when they’ve been held under 20.

Houston’s two most recent games that it failed to hit the 20-point mark – a 34-10 loss to Baltimore in last season’s playoffs and a 30-6 drubbing by the New York Jets in December – coincided with two of Stroud’s most ineffective outings as a pro.

Texans Player Projections (as of Friday)

• C.J. Stroud: 21.9 of 34.7 for 281.3 yards with 1.6 TDs and 0.5 INTs
• Joe Mixon: 19.1 rushes for 75.6 yards with 0.9 touchdowns
• Nico Collins: 4.8 receptions for 86.1 yards with 0.5 touchdowns
• Stefon Diggs: 4.8 receptions, 55.4 yards with 0.3 touchdowns
• Tank Dell: 3.8 receptions for 48.8 yards with 0.3 touchdowns

The Ravens succeeded by applying relentless heat, forcing Stroud into a countless amount of check downs and an anemic 5.3 yards per pass attempt by registering a sensational pressure rate of 61.1%. The Jets, one of the best coverage teams in the league in 2023, routinely shut down passing lanes to limit the Texans’ franchise quarterback to 91 passing yards on a day Stroud’s targets were open a mere 63% of the time.

If the Bears can do one or both of those things, their chances of winning would naturally be substantially greater. They’ll need Sweat and recent trade acquisition Darrell Taylor, fresh off an impressive Chicago debut in which he had two sacks and induced a key fumble the Bears recovered, to make an impact coming off the edge.

Johnson, who finished in the top five in open-allowed rate (52.3%) among cornerbacks targeted at least 40 times last season, is capable of neutralizing one of Houston’s outstanding outside duo of Nico Collins and Tank Dell – two of the league’s top seven receivers in burn yards per route in 2023. Others in the secondary will still need to step up, though, to lessen the other’s big-play potential as well as the savvy Diggs’ contributions out of the slot.

Caleb Williams needs to be better. The Texans’ defense may – or may not – present an opportunity for improvement.

His stat line may be nothing to brag about, but Williams can lay claim to a feat that accomplished quarterbacks such as Joe Burrow, Jared Goff, Matthew Stafford, Andrew Luck, Cam Newton and Eli Manning never achieved. He’s the first quarterback drafted No. 1 overall to win his first career NFL start since David Carr emerged victorious in the Texans’ first game as a franchise in 2002.

Win No. 2 figures to be harder to come by without an upgrade in accuracy, however. We charted just 58.6% of Williams’ passes to be catchable in his debut, well below last season’s league average of 76.4%. And his 48.3% completion rate against Tennessee looks even worse when factoring in that five of his nine completions came behind the line of scrimmage (Williams connected on just 39.1% of throws at least 1.0 air yard). 

The Bears’ new quarterback prodigy now takes on a Houston pass defense that was feast or famine when up against another young signal-caller who was often off the mark in the NFL Week 1.

Bears Player Projections (as of Friday)

• Caleb Williams: 21.6 of 34.2 for 245.1 yards with 1.2 TDs and 0.8 INTs
• D’Andre Swift: 18.7 rushes for 76.6 yards with 0.5 touchdowns
• DJ Moore: 5.1 receptions for 80.0 yards with 0.4 touchdowns
• Keenan Allen: 4.9 receptions, 49.7 yards with 0.2 touchdowns
• Cole Kmet: 2.2 receptions for 30.8 yards with 0.2 touchdowns

A secondary containing a pair of Day 2 rookie draft picks in cornerback Kamari Lassiter and Williams’ former USC teammate, safety Calen Bullock, held the Colts’ Anthony Richardson to 9-of-19 passing and his receivers to an extraordinary low 42.1% open rate.

That would be awfully impressive if not for the fact three of Richardson’s completions resulted in gains of 50-plus yards, and two of those went for touchdowns that kept the Colts in a game Houston had otherwise dominated.

Williams did misfire on all four of his attempts of 21.0 air yards or more in the opener, but was an adept downfield thrower in college as well as a renowned big-play hunter who should be capable of exploiting the deep-ball issues that were apparent in the Texans’ Week 1 performance.

Chicago’s receiving corps also possesses a high-caliber field stretcher in DJ Moore, one of only six players last season with at least five touchdown catches of 20-plus yards.

MOST RECEIVING TDs OF 20+ YDS IN 2023

• 9 – Tyreek Hill, Miami Dolphins
• 8 – Mike Evans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
• 7 – Jordan Addison, Minnesota Vikings
• 5 – DJ Moore, Chicago Bears
• 5 – George Pickens, Pittsburgh Steelers
• 5 – Amon-Ra St. Brown, Detroit Lions

The Texans only surrendered eight passing touchdowns of more than 20 yards last season, which suggests their biggest problem from last week seems quite correctable. They were pretty easy to throw on from outside the red zone, however, ranking 29th in the NFL in passing yards allowed per play (7.5) and 23rd in open-allowed percentage (81.6) while permitting a completion rate of 70.5%.

As the league’s only team with three players who recorded at least 70 catches and 700 receiving yards in 2023, Williams should be set up for a more efficient outing this week as he develops a greater rapport with his talented trio of Moore, tight end Cole Kmet and Chicago’s major offseason veteran addition, six-time Pro Bowl receiver Keenan Allen.

Williams may also have some new obstacles to navigate as well, though. For one, he’ll likely be facing a stouter pass rush than the Titans posed in the formidable edge tandem of Will Anderson and Danielle Hunter. Anderson parlayed a strong 21.1 pressure rate into 2023 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year honors, while Hunter is coming off his fifth double-digit sack season after amassing a career-high 16.5 with the Minnesota Vikings a year ago.

The Bears seem likely to be without their other heralded rookie, wide receiver Rome Odunze, this week due to a knee sprain. Though the No. 9 overall pick also had a dud of a debut with just one catch (and that came off a deflected pass intended for Moore), his probable absence may force Allen into more outside snaps and away from the slot role where he’s historically been more dangerous throughout his prolific career. Allen, however, is also questionable due to a heel issue.

Defense and special teams were able to bail out the Bears against the Titans. It’s hard to see that being the case against a more potent and diverse opponent like the Texans if the offense can’t reach the end zone a second straight week.

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