What came before is less likely to repeat than it is an indicator of what is going to happen next.
There is a reason why Qoxhi Picks open National Football League seasons with robust winning percentages. The public is betting on what happened the previous year is going to happen again, while our work is designed to take advantage of the cause and effect principle in that what happened in the past is likely to cause something new in the future.
In 2024, our preseason pick to win Super Bowl LIV was the Detroit Lions. Even though the Lions are one of the few teams to never even participate in a Roman Numeral game, their development showed to us a potential for a very special season. In fact, they had that special season, came into the postseason with the number one seed in the National Football Conference and were favored to advance to their first Super Bowl when the playoffs opened.
One might think this would have us doubling down on our preseason pick.
Nope.
Our pick in the Lions opening postseason game was the double-digit underdog Washington Commanders when they visited Ford Field and the high scoring Lions.
Why?
Because the Lions lopsided success in the regular season, they scored more points than any team in the league, 564, and had the best points for and against gap, 222, put them in a category in our office we call the “Peyton Manning Trap.” Too much success in the regular season puts a dominant team in a postseason motivational trap. Manning routinely led the Indianapolis Colts to division winning seasons with a dozen victories or more, then came up flat and lost in the postseason before reaching the final leg of the quest for the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
In his career, Manning played in three Super Bowls, two with the Colts and one in his final NFL season with the Denver Broncos. His only Super Bowl win in Indianapolis was in the 2006 season when the Colts rush defense was the worst in football. The 2006 Colts was not the best team or earned the best record in Manning’s career, but they won it all because they were motivated to overcome a perceived weakness. When Manning’s Broncos won Super Bowl 50, Denver was a decided underdog to the more highly rated Carolina Panthers.
When the Lions opened the playoffs last January, they were riding high and figured the upstart Commanders with a rookie quarterback who had won his first postseason game the prior week in Tampa over the Buccaneers when the home team fumbled away a potential win, was ripe for a road loss. The motivated Commanders were led by rookie sensation Jaylen Daniels who flashed his quarterback brilliance while his Washington squad upset the Lions and headed to Philadelphia with more confidence than their talent warranted.
The Commanders Waterloo did not occur when people expected it in Detroit, but rather the following week in Philadelphia when bettors had piled on their chances to stay within a six-point spread. They didn’t, the homesteading Eagles sliced, diced and mutilated the visitors by a 55-23 final score. The Eagles also won their next game too, as an underdog, against the team that had won two straight Super Bowls including a win over the Eagles in Super Bowl LVII.
Cause and effect.
So, now what?
Two years ago, the Houston Texans rose from last place to the postseason behind a rookie sensation at quarterback, C.J. Stroud. The bright star out of Ohio State also guided the upstart Texans to a playoff opening win over the road favored Cleveland Browns. Stroud was the second overall pick in the 2003 NFL draft, behind another quarterback, Bryce Young of Alabama.
Sound familiar?
Last year, Daniels was the second pick in the NFL draft behind another quarterback, Southern California’s Caleb Williams, who was chosen with the first overall selection by the Chicago Bears. Daniels went on to have a spectacular rookie season that resulted in a dozen regular season wins and a pair of playoff victories including their upset triumph over the favored Lions at Ford Field.
Yes, the Texans and Commanders rode success following last place finishes with the addition of a rookie sensation at quarterback taken with the second pick in the draft. The two teams were also under the direction of first-year head coaches: DeMeco Ryans with the Texans and Dan Quinn last year in Washington.
Consistently, a team that rises one year from the cellar to a playoff berth has a huge dip the following season. That is because their assent is based on the need to overcome past disappointments, while after first achieving success there is a tendency to have expectations exceed actual talent.
With that as our guide, we expected the Texans to have problems in 2024 while expectations were pinned to the breakthrough campaign they enjoyed the prior year. In fact, the Texans exceeded their prospects on our books with another division title in the AFC South that included three other teams, the Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans, who all finished the year with losing won/loss records.
In the 2024 regular season, the Texans allowed the same number of points that they scored, 372, and after opening the postseason as a home underdog and beating the Los Angeles Chargers, were downed on the road against the eventual AFC Champion Kansas City Chiefs.
The high expectation for the Texans entering last season over their initial success in 2023 did lead to a losing point spread record, 7-8-2. That point spread mark was better than we would have anticipated given their meteoric rise the previous year. By the same factors governing what comes next, we would expect the Commanders to suffer from bloated expectations in 2025 and also finish the upcoming season with a losing point spread mark.
As for the Texans, their overachieving last year doesn’t show up on a lot of charts, but it does on ours. Their winning straight-up record, 10-7, near breakeven point spread mark and opening postseason win all point to a very special year for Houston in 2025.
How special?
Qoxhi Picks: Houston Texans (35 to 1) to win Super Bowl LX