The Texans (5-3) would reach the playoffs for the first time in their short history if the season ended today. And you know where we always turn when you see a team improve or decline: we look at the passing game.

 

Naturally, you find your answers there.

 

In fact, we were a little surprised by some of the numbers Matt Schaub has put up this season and in his short career. You already know he leads the NFL this year in passing yards (2,342) and is third in passing YPG (292.8). He also leads the NFL with 16 TD passes (tied with the much more widely publicized BrettFavre and Drew Brees).

 

That's all good stuff. But you also know we love passing yards per attempt as an indicator of success. And when we looked at Schaub's career average of 7.78 YPA, it really jumped off the screen. We knew right away that very few players in history have matched that mark. We were surprised by how few.

 

Schaub (1,113 career attempts) is still well short of the minimum 1,500 attempts required for "official" NFL records. But his career average of 7.78 YPA through Week 8 puts him on pace to join the all-time top 10. As it is, he's sandwiched between two of the greatest and most successful quarterbacks in the history of the game: Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas.

 

	Player	Attempts	Yards	YPA
1	Otto Graham	1,565	13,499	8.63
2	Sid Luckman	1,744	14,686	8.42
3	Norm Van Brocklin	2,895	23,611	8.16
4	Tony Romo	1,537	12,470	8.11
5	Steve Young	4,149	33,124	7.98
6	Ben Roethlisberger	2,138	17,036	7.97
7	Kurt Warner	3,840	30,505	7.94
8	Ed Brown	1,987	15,600	7.851
9	Bart Starr	3,149	24,718	7.849
n/a	Matt Schaub	1,113	8,659	7.78
10	Johnny Unitas	5,186	40,239	7.76

 

No, we're not saying Schaub deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Starr or Unitas. (Nor does Tony Romo, No. 4 on the list, for that matter).

 

The mass of data we have to measure him is still quite small. The guy's been in the league for six years, the first three as Michael Vick's anonymous back-up in Atlanta, and the last three as the anonymous starter in Houston. He's never started more than 11 games in a season and his 16 TD passes already are a career high. But his average per attempt has been consistently high when he has played, never dipping below 7.7 YPA over the last five years. Pretty impressive, given the limited evidence we have to work with.

 

The list above, meanwhile, provides quite a bit of hope for Houston fans hoping for the city's first pro football title since George Blanda and the Oilers beat San Diego in the 1961 AFL championship game. 

The bottom line is that the Texans are on pace to become the best team in their short franchise history because Schaub has been very, very effective passing the ball, especially with the highly productive Andre Johnson as his battery-mate.

 

As we stated before, if the Texans can field a decent defense one of these days, Schaub has the tools that could lead them to a Super Bowl. He's already putting up the types of efficiency numbers that eventually (and often) lead to championships.