Eagles vs Texans Thursday Night

Getting this pick in before the rest. Thursday night features the Houston Texans who are fighting to save their playoff hopes, and the Philadelphia Eagles coming off a streak ending loss to Chicago. The Texans finally showed the thing they were lacking last week: defense. A shut out of anyone is impressive. Even if it was a rookie quarterback, they still have Chris Johnson, a threat to score any time. The much more balanced attack of the Eagles should put them back to the highly vulnerable defense they've looked like for much of the season. On the other side of the ball, the Texans offense hasn't looked like the juggernaut that we saw early in the season over the last few weeks. However, the Eagles defense has been a mystery of its own. They're not going to shut down an offense like the Texans, but they certainly have the potential to slow them down and contain them when need be. We saw them do this against Peyton Manning as well as shut down the Packers offense after falling behind, allowing an almost comeback. But we've also seen them get burned by the likes of Kenny Britt and Jay Cutler. both of those games, however, came after a big win against the Falcons (then considered tops in the NFC) and the Giants (to take over the NFC East). The youth of the Eagles team seems to have played into these let-downs a lot. So will the Eagles re-focus in time for Thursday Night? Will they be able to match Houston's desperation? We'll see. Eagles win