Situation Impossible: Replacing Duane Brown

Situation Impossible is a weekly column focusing on the most devastating injury of the week in the NFL. "Next Man Up" is a catchy phrase, but some players are harder to replace than others. Here we investigate the alternatives on hand and how a team reacted or will react to having to replace star-level performance.

Injured player: Duane Brown, the Texans' stalwart left tackle.

Injury and diagnosis: Medical staff carted Brown off the field in Sunday's Week 17 finale against the Jaguars with a quad injury.

Watch entire @HoustonTexans sideline checks on Duane Brown after scary injury https://t.co/ttSlqYWCnt pic.twitter.com/86MkxYzHiJ
— Yahoo Canada Sports (@YahooCASports) January 4, 2016

A torn tendon in his right quadriceps will sideline Brown for the entirety of the playoffs. Brown called the injury "devastating" and said it was the worst injury he'd suffered as a professional.

Torn quads are rare for offensive linemen, who tend to suffer injuries on their arms or lower in their legs. Brown should recover by the start of training camp—the key word there being "should."

What's missing: This depends on whether you want to measure Brown by this season or by his career to date. Brown, 30, is getting to the age where we start looking for offensive linemen to lose a step. Per Pro Football Focus, Brown allowed a pressure every 20 dropbacks this season. That's not exactly the elite caliber of play we're used to seeing from him.

Brandon Brooks has surpassed Brown as the best lineman on the team at this point. That said, tackle depth in the NFL can go south quickly—plenty of teams start bad right tackles, let alone backups—and so losing Brown hurts the Texans, and at a bad time.

How this changes the playoffs: The Texans face the Chiefs in the Wild Card on Saturday. Kansas City's defense relies on dominant edge rushers. Justin Houston is one of the best pass rushers in the NFL (and he should finally be healthy). Tamba Hali is still a really good secondary pass rusher at this point in his career. The Chiefs finished fourth in adjusted sack rate despite a few missed games by each of those players.

Brown's absence opens up the Texans to big swing plays in this game. It also makes the team more likely to go down the depth chart at quarterback. Any kind of drop-off by Houston in pass protection is going to expose Brian Hoyer to hits, and he's already missed multiple games this season due to concussions.

In that sense, a lot could hinge on Brown's replacement.

What the team will do: The Texans will be starting Chris Clark, whom they acquired from the Broncos in training camp. Clark has a decent track record at tackle, and the Broncos probably regret dealing him now that they're starting Ryan Clark.

Chris Clark wasn't a major liability in the two weeks that Brown missed with a broken hand earlier this season. In fact, he had a strong showing in Week 3. I think he's significantly better than the average backup tackle. That said, he is still a backup tackle.

Adjusting our expectations: By most statistical measures, the Texans were already underdogs against the Chiefs. A team doesn't win 10 games in a row by accident. Houston's offense is going to force the defense to make up a lot of ground against a KC offense that's playing very well.

I don't think that losing Brown is necessarily a fatal blow to Houston's chances. They were already just scraping by on offense, and this doesn't change much in the way of schematics.

I do think it increases the chance that the Texans get blown out by the Chiefs. It will be harder to mount comebacks against a stout defense if the Texans are expecting a backup to hold down the most important position on the line. It increases the chances of the sacks, strip sacks, and turnovers that could make a game get out of hand.

Houston still has a chance, but the margin for error is slimmer without Duane Brown.