A couple days ago, the Texans’ chances of making the playoffs seemed entirely reasonable.

Beat the Jacksonville Jaguars at home (expected), have an 8-7 Kansas City team still fighting for a playoff spot beat the 9-6 San Diego Chargers at Arrowhead Stadium (definitely possible) and have the 7-8 Cleveland Browns beat the 9-6 but somewhat struggling Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore (well, it could happen), and the Texans would be in the postseason as a Wild Card team.

On Friday afternoon, things took a decided turn for the worse.

The Browns and Chiefs both ruled out their starting quarterbacks due to injuries. In place of Brian Hoyer and Alex Smith – not world-beaters, but certainly capable players – we are now faced with the prospect of Connor Shaw and Chase Daniel starting in games that the Texans need them to win. Sweet!

Shaw is an undrafted rookie from South Carolina who was still on the Browns’ practice squad as of Friday morning. Daniel was undrafted in 2009 and has one career start in six seasons. In other words, fellow Texans fans: Time to start looking ahead to 2015, and not in a January/February playoffs kind of way. We’re fucked.

There are a few silver linings:

1) Shaw was actually pretty good in the preseason, and it’s not like he can be any worse than Johnny Manziel, and the Browns have managed to win seven games despite subpar quarterback play all season. And the Texans just beat the Ravens with a practice squad quarterback who wasn’t even on their own practice squad (Case Keenum, signed from St. Louis).

2) The one start of Daniel’s career was actually in almost this exact scenario last season – Week 17, against the Chargers, who needed to win to make the playoffs. That game was at San Diego and the Chiefs had nothing to play for since they already had clinched a playoff spot, and Daniel was good enough (21-30, 200 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT, 59 rushing yards) to almost engineer a stunning victory (the Chiefs lost 27-24 on a missed field goal as time expired).

3) If we’ve learned anything from the Texans this season, it’s that you don’t need good quarterback play to win games. And after the improbable “return of Case Keenum” victory over the Ravens last week, it’s tough to rule anything out.

Maybe it’s actually possible that it could all break the right way on Sunday. In some ways, it would actually make sense – this would be how it has to go down for the 2014 Texans to make the playoffs.

If the Texans can indeed make it in with Week 17 victories from Case Keenum, Connor Shaw and Chase Daniel, it could only mean one thing: Super Bowl, here we come.