The Josh Innes Show - Texans Are Alive and Other NFL Musings

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

First off, the Lions are going to kill my $1,000 parlay and I really hate them. It's not unrealistic to think the Texans can win the South. I know they lost yesterday, but I still don't think anyone is beating the Rams. Let's look at the rest of the playoff races. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can I tell you who I hate, the Detroit Lions? My view of them has changed very much over the last couple of weeks since they've become a terrible team that can't be anybody worth a shit. And now my parlay is in peril. It looked like an easy $900 parlay win and life was going to be good. I had that to look forward to, right? Like that was like something I could look forward to and focus on and be excited about coming up. I was going to go into next year like, hey, here's $1,000. Not going to happen now.

Not going to happen because the Lions stink. And they're not making the playoffs is going to cost me that parlay because everything else is on pace to be successful. I know you have your own problems, but that was a $100 bet that could have scored a season long bet you waited this whole damn time. And now the Lions who look like a lock for the playoffs. Hell, my cash out was $400 on this thing a couple of days ago. Now when I look at it, it'll probably be nothing to be pennies. I understand you have your own problems.

There's other football things to get into, but the Lions collapse is just gross. Anyway, more to come. So you look around the NFL. I still do not believe that the Bears are a good football team. You cannot convince me that the Bears are good. The Bears keep finding ways. And yes, they had a quality win over the Eagles. But are the Eagles really a quality win anymore?

The Eagles are no longer a team that's struggling on offense. We're in week, what, 13, 14 of the season. is no, oh, they're just struggling. No, the Eagles are a bad offensive football team with bad offensive coaching and bad quarterback play. So the Bears beating them while, you know, they were seven point underdog and hey, congrats to them for winning the game. I don't look at them and go, that was like a statement when that proved they're worth a shit. The Eagles are not worth a shit. The Eagles are not a good football team. And oh, mind you, I know that I'm just sitting here banging on the bears. I hate the bears. The bears are going to keep me from my cash.

Because the lion should have won this damn division. Then the lions go out and lay an egg on Thanksgiving, like a bunch of dopes. Like, everything about it sucks. But let me look at this. So if you look at what the Eagles have done, the Eagles have pulled off a couple of close victories. So while they're, what, 8 and 4, 8 and 3, whatever they are, they can very well have five or six losses. So let's cut the shit about the Eagles. The Eagles aren't very good.

So the bears are going to have something to prove when they play Green Bay with the division on the line. And they play twice, I think they still play twice in the last like five weeks of the year. okay so looking at this uh let's see what the bears are made of i just need to pull off some sort of miracle to get the lions in but you start looking around the NFL right now and you start looking at the standings dude the NFC has some is stacked with good teams or at least teams that are in it right like teams you believe can do it right you look around the nFC i don't believe in the bears and by the way the bear's strength of victory is still 347 give me a break so they they lead the the league fine, whatever. The Rams would shellac the Bears. And that's coming off the Rams

losing to Carolina on the road in the rain. Now, if you sent the Bears or the Rams to Chicago and the playoffs on the road in the rain, then maybe that'd be a different story. But if you look at what the Rams have done and you look at the Rams losses this year, you had the loss that shouldn't have been a loss where they blew the big lead to the Eagles. They were up huge, blew it, and still had a chance to win it, had a field goal blocked fine. Then you had the close loss just then to Carolina. That is a three lost team that could very well be undefeated.

They were driving with a chance to tie that game in the rain. They fumbled and it cost them the game. They very well could have taken the lead there and won the damn thing. The Rams are legit. The Rams are good. To me, the Rams are still the favorite to win the Super Bowl. The Eagles are not. The Eagles are a broken team

and they're not good. The Bucks are not going to win anything of consequence. I don't believe Seattle will because at the end of the day, Seattle still has Sam Dick Darnold, and I don't believe in Darnold at all. Like, he's going to come out and throw four picks in a game that you can't afford to have him throw four picks, and they're going to lose. Seattle is not a legit contender. Green Bay, I don't buy their offense enough to view them as a legit contender.

San Francisco just keeps hanging on, man. You look at the west and you look at the north in the NFC, and this is why my lions are fucked. But you start looking around the lions, the lions who sit at seven and five. they have to find a way to either win the division which is virtually impossible now unless I mean look the benefit is they have a win over the bears so really they need to I don't even know what their best case scenario is for the lions right now like they're seven and five they've like they've lost twice now to green bay and green bay has the advantage of a tie so the odds of you jumping green bay are next to nil whether it be in the wild card whether it be

in the division unless one of these teams falls off a cliff your hope is the bears get to a point where they still find a way to lose five games. They have to find two more losses. The problem is if they find two more losses, there's a chance those are coming to Green Bay, and Green Bay will end up winning the division. You can't catch them anyway. So basically, and I know I keep focusing on the Lions a lot here

because I'm selfish and I care about my parlay, and my parlay was a lot two weeks ago. Now I'm fucked. But you look at the Lions. The Lions just basically have to win out. So they've got to get to 12 and 5 and just see where it goes from there. The problem is they have to play the Rams. They have to play, let's see who else is on that.

Oh, the Cowboys this week, and the Cowboys are one of the hottest teams in the league right now. So does anybody look at that and really believe in their little heart of hearts that anything is going to come of that for the Lions? And it's going to kill my parlay, and it's going to be devastating, and it sucks. San Francisco keeps finding a way. Like, right now I do not believe the Eagles are a legit contender. I don't believe Tampa's a legit contender, and both of those teams are going to win their divisions. And I don't believe in Seattle because I don't believe in Darnold, Big Pick. And I don't really believe in the Packers, but we'll see.

It's interesting, they're all pretty good. But then I look and I go, I don't believe that any of these teams are going to beat Matt Stafford in the playoffs. I don't believe that Sam Dick Darnold is beating Matt Stafford in a playoff game. I do not believe that Brock Purdy, who's been not very good, is going to beat Matt Stafford in the playoffs. I don't believe that Jordan Love is going to win a playoff game against Matt Stafford. I just don't believe that.

But then you flip it over and you go to the game. the AFC, and while it's very top-heavy, look, the Broncos pulled off another one last night. Again, I don't know. Maybe I'm just like my buddy A.J. Hoffman, who just thinks that every team kind of sucks and that every quarterback sucks and that no one's actually good. Maybe he's not wrong. Maybe everybody just kind of sucks, because I don't believe in Denver. New England, I believe in New England a lot more than I believe in Denver.

But maybe that's unfair. Maybe it's not. but I just don't believe in Denver. Jacksonville, they're 8 and 4 now. I don't buy them at all. The Ravens are 6 and 6. Nobody buys them. The Chargers are sitting at 8 and 4,

but now you're dealing with a situation with Herbert where you don't know if he's going to be in or out because of his wrist injury. I think he broke his hand. The bill, and then the thing that's interesting is you've got the bills just kind of loitering down there in the 7 spot. You got the Texans who, at first it looked like the Texans were going to be too far behind to catch anybody.

Dude, they're a game out of winning the division. and they're smoking hot. And look, they've got to play Kansas City. Kansas City season is on the line this weekend. I feel like every week their season's on the line, but it is. They must win. So it's going to be a tough put to go to Kansas City in a game that Kansas City must win. But you know what travels?

If you want to use all the cliches, defense travels. And that's what they've been bawling with the defense. And once they get past that Chiefs game, you've got back-to-back games, Cardinals and Raiders, where those are two games you should win. You're at home. The Cardinals can't stop anybody. The Raiders can't score or stop anybody. So let's say you get to a position here. Let's say you lose to the Chiefs. That's a tough loss. It keeps the Chiefs alive in the race. They're a threat to you now. Let's say you lose that. Right. You fall to. What would that make you? Seven and six. So you're a seven and six football team at that point. You win the next two. You are a, what would that make you nine and six with two games to go? All right. Can you beat the Chargers? Yes. They're a very beatable team. Their offensive line

is in shambles and it's been in shambles all year. You think the Texans defense can't get to Herbert with that offensive line? Of course it can't. You look at the Colts. You've just beaten the Colts at their place. What we have seen now is, and this is what we thought would happen when the whole world was talking about

Daniel Jones, Indiana Jones, all this shit. Let's see how long that can last. Let's see how sustainable Daniel Jones is. And I get that he's dealing with like a broken leg right now. He's looked like shit. And that offense has not looked the same. They are getable. So if the Texans, out of their last, what, we have, what, four games left, five games left, four, one, two, three, five, out of their last five games, the Texans realistically could win four of those or five, they could

realistically win five of those. What's the spread in this Chiefs game? I haven't looked. I'm going to guess the Chiefs are favored by a field goal just because they're at home. Let's see. The spread is three and a half. I believe they can go to Kansas City and win that. I don't know what the weather is going to be. I don't know anything like that. I mean, it's snowed in Missouri a couple days ago, so I don't know what kind of weather and weather may play a factor.

But again, weather helps defense too. It's a night game. Kansas City's in a must-win spot. They're five-and-one at home. So, look, I get that. Why couldn't they? Like, I've shifted gears. Look, the Texans were buried.

I thought they sucked. I thought they were done. They're not. I was wrong. The world was wrong. So I have no reason to believe they can't go into Arrowhead and win that. Why couldn't they? Why couldn't they?

And that makes it really interesting because all of a sudden you're right back in the division race. You're not just talking wildcard at that point. Like it's still too early for teams or fan bases to be totally scoreboard watching, right? Like I'm rooting for the Lions because I need them to make the playoffs. Like you don't want to scoreboard watch and look ahead to the schedule. You just want to win your games and just survive in advance or whatever. So I get that. But you kind of have to because like the Lions could win out and still be screwed because they've screwed themselves.

They haven't beaten anybody of consequence. I guess the best thing that could happen to them is they beat the Bears earlier this year. That's kind of their saving grace here. What you need to have happen is maybe the ideal scenario for the Lions is the Bears and Packers split. Because you don't want the Packers to be the team. Well, either way, you want to be either the Bears are your team. So you still have a chance to play them one more time and you can beat them twice and control your own destiny as it relates to them. And at that point, you would, right?

Because even though they're 9 and 3, you're 7 and 5, you do control your own destiny as it relates to the Bears. So if you're the Lions, that's your hope. I saw the Bills and the Steelers game yesterday was dreadful. Both of those teams stink. There's nothing special about the bills except Josh Allen, and they have no playmakers on offense. They stink. The Steelers stink. Actually, let me get an update, though.

Let me see what that parlay actually is, because I did take a wins parlay for teams. See if I have a legit shot at this. That can be my only hope. Won't be as big of a win as the Lions one would have been, but I'm never going to get over the Lions thing, just so you guys know, because that should have been a nice $1,000 hit. I'd have been rich at that point. I would have stopped the podcast. I would have been that rich.

Let's see here. So the division winners, the Chargers have already won there. They were over seven and a half. The Jags have already hit those. Those are over five and a half. I bet all these down. That's why the value wasn't as good. So I need, let's see, I need the lions to win nine, they have seven.

So the lions need to find two wins. The bucks need to win nine. They have seven, so they need to find two wins. Or do they have eight? Do the bucks have eight now? They have seven. So they need to find two wins. The Steelers need eight, so they need to find two wins.

And the Texans have seven. They need to get one more win. So that's where I stand on that. But we'll see what happens. I'm very concerned about the Lions one now. The Lions have bent me right over and given me the old gravy pipe. But it wasn't a very good football weekend either. The Sunday night game for once was actually interesting,

and it was with one team that's not going to make the playoffs and one team that I don't believe is going to win anything in the playoffs because I don't believe in Denver, nor do I believe in Bo Nix. But the Sunday night game finally gave us a good one. It was an overtime one. We finally got one. That's very rare that we've been getting those lately. Sunday night was the best one of the bunch,

and there was just a lot of bad football on Sunday. San Francisco and Cleveland, the Jacksonville, Tennessee game was a giant dud. Texans and Colts was a decent game. Saints and Dolphins ended up close, but it was a blowout for most of it. Jets and Falcons, the end of that game was a joke. The number of times each of those teams had to give the ball back on a quest to get a field goal at the end of the game. Carolina game was pretty good with the Rams. Tampa and Arizona was close, but it wasn't really a good game.

The Seattle game was a blowout. The Chargers game was a blowout. out. The Pittsburgh game was a blowout. So there's a lot of bad football, but we shall see what happens tonight. We get Monday night football and then a huge one on Thursday, too, for the Cowboys and the Lions. So there's a lot going on here. But anyway, more to come.