It always happens this way, doesn't it? You finally get your offense squared away and lined up with your powerful defense, and the next thing you know, the best player on that defense shows up to training camp with a back injury that appears likely to end his season.
And so it goes for the Houston Texans, who are bracing for the loss of All-Pro defensive end J.J. Watt before the calendar turns to October.
Except for one minor detail.
Their offense isn't squared away. Not by a long shot.
If anything, it is performing worse than at any point in coach Bill O'Brien's three-year tenure. The Texans (2-1) were shut out in Week 3 by the New England Patriots. They have amassed the fourth-fewest first downs in the league and rank 29th with an average of 4.64 yards per play.
When you put it all together, their offense sits dead last in the league, No. 32 of 32 teams, in Football Outsiders' DVOA metric, which measures scheme-wide success relative to the league average.
The slow start is not entirely surprising, given a busy offseason that brought new starters at quarterback (Brock Osweiler), tailback (Lamar Miller), receiver (Will Fuller) and center (Greg Mancz). That's a lot of upheaval in a short time, and the Texans' grand scheme surely counted on their defense, led by J.J. Watt doing J.J. Watt things, to help cover the personnel transition.
They'll no longer have that luxury, of course, and now it's time once and for all to see if O'Brien can be the offensive guru the Texans thought they were getting when they hired him. We saw little evidence of it in 2014, when the team passed on drafting a franchise quarterback and finished the season ranked 20th in DVOA. Last season was worse, capped by quarterback Brian Hoyer's four-interception game in a wild-card playoff loss. The Texans were No. 24 in DVOA at that point.
O'Brien's career as an NFL head coach now depends on reversing that trend. He'll need to find a way to make Osweiler a consistent downfield passer and better decision-maker. He'll need to get the most from receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who is one of the five most-skilled players at his position. He'll need to push Miller's limits as a feature back, and he'll have to guide Fuller through a rookie season that already has had its highs and lows.
The good news is the Texans have managed to win two games with Watt nowhere close to his best. His eight tackles are the fewest he has ever had through the first three weeks of the season, and his 1.5 sacks are his fewest through three games since 2011. The AFC South, meanwhile, remains an eminently winnable division amid a combined 2-7 start for the Indianapolis Colts, Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars.
The Texans had a nice-looking plan for 2016, the best they have entered a season with in a long time. But you know what they say about best-laid plans. Sometimes they're crushed when the star hurts his back. Now it's time for the rest of the franchise, starting with the head coach, to pick up the slack.