2. Colts vs. Texans: A battle of rookies
Being in the AFC South, Indianapolis will play the Houston Texans twice. One of those games should be in primetime. It has all the makings of an entertaining Thursday Night Football game. Two first-year head coaches with rookie quarterbacks, and several promising young players, clashing as they try to turn their franchises around.
For the Texans, they are coming off a 3-13-1 season, but they hired defensive guru DeMeco Ryans to be the team’s head coach. In the draft, Houston gave Ryans quarterback CJ Stroud with the No. 2 pick and edge rusher Will Anderson with the No. 3 pick. That’s in addition to all of the other young players that Houston drafted this year and last year.
The Colts, on the other hand, hired Shane Steichen, an offensive guru that will help get their offense rolling. Indianapolis gave Steichen a dynamic quarterback in Anthony Richardson, drafting him with the No. 4 pick. Adding Richardson to a roster with several other young talented players makes Indy’s future really bright.
So there’s an offensive first-year head coach versus a defensive first-year head coach, two talented rookie quarterbacks drafted in the top five of the draft, and young promising rosters. This could be the start of competitive rivalry that goes on for a decade; the beginning should be in a primetime game.
As a bonus to the storylines, the two matchups between these teams last season were bonkers. In Week 1, they played go a 20-20 tie, thanks to a fourth-quarter surge from the Colts, and in Week 18, Houston sacrificed the No. 1 pick by winning a 32-31 thriller. If this season’s games have any chance of being like those two, at least one should be in primetime.