The odds are not in the Houston Texans favor after all

The Houston Texans are a top team in the NFL and possible favorites to not only make but win the Super Bowl in 2025. They added Pro Bowlers like Stefon Diggs and Danielle Hunter, while already carrying one of the league's most exciting, young, quarterbacks in C.J. Stroud. The Texans should be a favorite by many publications.

Not ESPN. The sports network and website released their Football Power Index for the upcoming 2024 season and the Texans cut, but barely. The club is only ranked 10th in ESPN's FPI index, playing them below the Green Bay Packers of all teams. The club only has a 4% chance of winning the Super Bowl this year according to ESPN, comparable to the Atlanta Falcons with a 3% chance.

The perennial underachievers that are the Dallas Cowboys have a higher percentage at 9%. That's fourth-best for the entire list. The only thing the Cowboys rank that high in consistently since the 1990s is claims of "This is our year!" Spoiler, it hasn't been their year for decades.

It's maddening that so many publications, writers, and "experts" would put someone like Stroud over as the top young quarterback in the NFL but then show Jordan Love favoritism, who has been wildly inconsistent through his first year as a starter. It's even more maddening that the Cowboys, a team that made any noticeable improvements to their roster, despite going "all in", would rate that much higher than the Texans.

The Texans are a young and upcoming roster, who have made all the necessary moves to improve their roster this offseason. They may not have all been the best version of said move, but they needed a running back, and they got a running back. They needed a linebacker and got a linebacker. They drafted key positions that were hampered by older, slower players. Overall the team just looks better on paper now.

And they won the AFC South last year and got to the second round of the playoffs. I don't believe that a quarterback who was on the verge of being benched and a team that is known for collapsing is going to outshine the Texans. I just don't.

The Texans are going to prove ESPN's PFI index wrong. I just know it.