I talked with Danny Parkins and Carrington Harrison on 610 Sports Thursday afternoon before the NFL schedule came out and Danny made a good point: the schedule matters more this year with the Justin Houston injury. As in the actual order of the games matters.
Houston, as you know, had ACL surgery in February. It's been speculated he could miss the start of the season. A month? Two months? We don't know but Chiefs GM John Dorsey told us a couple weeks ago that they're confident Houston will be back early. So we shall see.
Let's say Houston misses the first half of the season. You hope it's less than that but it may not be. Here are the affected games in this scenario:
Chargers, at Texans, Jets, at Steelers, at Raiders, Saints, at Colts, Jaguars
NFL teams change so much from year to year that it's hard to say whether this is a good or bad schedule for Houston to miss. I don't really like the idea of seeing Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees and Andrew Luck without the Chiefs best pass rusher. The Texans, Jets and Jaguars may not have the quarterbacks that will torch the Chiefs (I'll buy into Brock when I see it).
Do we like this schedule if Houston misses the first half of the season?