A.J. Green reportedly won’t play today. He says he’s healthy enough to play and wants to play, but with the Bengals being out of playoff contention, the conservative move is to shut him down for the rest of the season, not risking any setbacks with the hamstring he injured a month ago.
In the same game, there’s increasing speculation the Texans will shut down Lamar Miller. He didn’t practice all week, and the game might be pretty meaningless anyway. If Tennessee wins today at Jacksonville, the AFC South will be decided next week in Nashville (Texans at Titans). If Tennessee loses today, Houston could then clinch with a win over the Bengals in tonight’s game.
I’ve gone back in and re-examine the projections for these teams.
For Cincinnati, I’m leaving Andy Dalton in the same spot. He’ll probably put up something like 240 yards, with probably just 1 TD pass. I settled on 1.15 TD passes in our projection model.
With Green out, I am moving Brandon LaFell and Tyler Boyd up. I would say LaFell has a good chance at about 65 yards, with a 1-in-3 chance of being the guy catching that touchdown passes. I would put Boyd about 15 percent behind him.
For Houston, if Miller sits out (and I think he will), I believe Alfred Blue will start and be their main running back. I would expect he would run for something like 60-70 yards, with perhaps a 50-60 percent chance of touchdown.
Blue has been used a couple of times in a heavy workhorse role – as in about 35 carries. But I don’t think they will use him that way tonight. I think they’ll give about 30 percent of the work to Akeem Hunt. Hunt nearly scored a 1-yard touchdown last week, and he ran really effectively in a game against Jacksonville earlier in the year. And Jonathan Grimes is their third-down back; he’ll probably account for 10-20 percent of their running back touches.
Cincinnati has a poor run defense, especially with Vontaze Burfict out. So I believe the Texans will have some success running it, going for something like 120 yards and a touchdown on the ground.
If the Jaguars upset the Titans (stranger things have happened) then I believe Houston would enter this game with blood in the water, really making a big effort to sew up the division.
—Ian Allan