He calls them “Skyrockets.”

Paul, who has worked for me since the 1980’s, beginning with stuffing envelopes before he was even in high school to his time as a student at Cal Berkeley to today, where he keeps numbers that consistently are ahead of the curve. He likes to give names to his revelations. A Skyrocket is a team that has the makings numerically that indicate they are better than the public has yet realized and have a straight-up trajectory.

I work with my own set of criteria for picking games, and occasionally our two methods collide. Like last week, when I determined the Atlanta Falcons over the Houston Texans was the best bet of the week.

Paul has the Texans in a Skyrocket mode and I saw the Falcons coming off back-to-back losses and now meeting a Houston team that had just had a huge win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, 30-6, in a motivational trap.

As it turned out, we could both have been considered right or wrong. When I wrote the column picking the Falcons they were favored by 1½ points. Later in the week, they rose to a 2½ point favorite, and at kickoff on Sunday, the line had settled with the Texans getting two points.

The Falcons won the game by two, 21-19.

Without a serious interruption in his established criteria Paul’s numbers do not change from one week to the next, while my motivational factors are as fluid as the Truckee River. One week I will find a team in a perfect spot to excel, and then after succeeding at that motivational mountain top, be in a trap the very next week. Read that this week as the San Francisco 49ers bouncing off their ideal spot at home against the Dallas Cowboys last week to the toughest of all spots this Sunday when they meet the Browns in Cleveland.

What works best for Qoxhi, and our valued customers, is when numbers generated by my partners, both Paul and Kevin, align with my calculations that spot motivational highs and lows.

Like this week.

The Texans come off their narrow loss in Atlanta, which adds to my respect for DeMeco Ryans’ team given the tough spot I thought they were in last week, and now host the New Orleans Saints. The Saints are good enough to roll over the New England Patriots on the road, as they did last Sunday by a score of 34-0, and bad enough to get blown out on their home field by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as they did the prior week, 26-9.

Teams good enough to win in the right spots, and not good enough to overcome bad motivational situations, are my favorite squads to isolate for either a win or loss. The Saints are textbook in this regard, and this week I see them bouncing off an unexpected easy win and favored against a Texans team coming off a loss. This creates a real bad situation for the visitors in Houston on Sunday.

This week, the motivational edge is clearly with the home-standing Texans, and we’ve got one more huge advantage with Houston this week … they are a Skyrocket.

Qoxhi Picks: Houston Texans (+1) over New Orleans Saints