NFL's wide-open Super Bowl race has a familiar face gaining steam: The Houston Texans

The Houston Texans might have cleaned up some of their problems, finally rewarding their ravenous defensive performances with enough offense to rack up some wins recently. After starting off the season 0-3, the Texans have been on a 7-2 run and finds themselves with a legitimate shot at winning the AFC South a third straight year.

The offense was truly dismal in September, but it’s rounded into a respectable unit and the defense has stayed on top of its game to make the Texans overall one of the tougher outs in the NFL right now. They need to keep winning to stay afloat in the division and playoff races, but the recent turn in play should inspire confidence that they have a chance in every game.

Just like last season, the Texans are still here and relevant because of their defense. The pass rush duo of Will Anderson and Danielle Hunter has been a total nightmare for opposing quarterbacks, seemingly generating pressure at will. That’s not even really that big of an exaggeration, either. According to TruMedia, opposing quarterbacks are facing a 54% pressure rate on third and fourth down when Hunter and Anderson are on the field together. With all dropbacks combined with those two on the field, they still generate pressure on 46.5% of dropbacks, which is just an astronomical number. The team’s elite rushing defense has teams playing with an average third down distance of nearly eight yards this season, continually giving Anderson and Hunter the green light to take down quarterbacks.

The chaos those two wreak in the pocket can, at times, cause frenzied second-effort plays that create explosives for offenses — the Texans actually rank 26th in explosive pass rate allowed when they pressure opposing quarterbacks — but the secondary is one of the better units in the league as well, and they’ve done a great job capitalizing on their pass rush.  Houston ranks seventh in interception percentage when opposing quarterbacks are under pressure (4.5%) and that number bumps up to 6.4% when Anderson and Hunter are on the field together for pressured plays. This is with the offense doing next to nothing for the majority of the season up to this point.

While the offense was truly miserable to start the year, they’ve been playing much butter football of late. Since Week 10, the Texans have essentially been a league-average offense. They’re 15th in points per drive (2.07), yards per drive (31.4), success rate on offense (42%) and expected points added per play (0.00). That’s 15th across the board. Average.

While that’s still a bit of a disappointment from where the C.J. Stroud era started, it’s a major improvement over the first nine weeks of the season when they were the worst or near-worst in nearly every major offensive category. They still have a bit too many negative plays right now, but an average offense (if they can maintain this standard) being paired with a truly elite defense that is perfectly structured to win in the modern NFL is still going to be a headache to deal with.

It’s a low bar, but the past month of play is the best stretch the Texans’ offense has put together since Stroud’s electric rookie season. They gave Kansas City a tough time in last season’s playoffs playing worse football than this on offense, and the defense hasn’t taken a step back. At 7-5 they’re still third in the AFC South, but they have a championship-level trump card with just enough offense to make seemingly anything possible in what feels like a wide-open NFL.