Editor’s Note: When we contacted Barrett Walton about contributing to our pick segment last week we also asked what his thoughts were on how the Texans were sitting heading into the second half of the season. I think he warned me once previously, when he did a Q&A interview for us during the offseason, that brevity was not a strong suit. He gave us way more insight than we could have used on that post, but I thought it was an interesting read.

I thought about writing a post on Houston myself and incorporating some of the comments into that, but I think Barrett’s comments can stand alone. So here’s a guest post from Barrett Walton, managing editor of the Texans Bull Blog and weekly contributor at the Austin Chronicle’s sports blog.

Entering their bye week at 6-1 and resting comfortably as the clear favorite to secure home field advantage throughout the playoffs, the Houston Texans have to be thinking “we have finally arrived.” If you were following this team closely then you realized back in 2010 that you had something special brewing down in the bayou. The Texans offense was becoming unstoppable as Arian Foster broke out of obscurity and Gary Kubiak’s zone scheme came together as a pure system offense. The defensive side of the ball was loaded with talent. All but one of Kubiak’s first round picks had been defensive players.

Like many teams trying to breakthrough into relevancy, the Houston Texans couldn’t put all the pieces in place. The 2010 defense was historically bad. Loaded with talent but with no schematic direction, the Texans couldn’t get out of their own way. While the offense was putting up over 25 points per game, the defense was giving up even more in heartbreaking fashion.

Enter Wade Phillips in 2011 and overnight the defensive side of the ball was transformed into one of the fiercest squads in the league. Phillips looked at the game film of 2010 and saw one player who played with controlled ferociousness and all out effort in Brian Cushing. Phillips said that he wanted a defense that was made up of 11 guys like Cushing. The Texans used all but two of their eight draft picks in 2011 on defense starting with first round defensive end J.J. Watt.

In only his second season J.J. Watt has established himself as the most dominant defensive player in the league. Statistically, Watt is doing things that are unheard of in the NFL. The second year player has recorded at least one sack in every game since January of last season up until the game against the Ravens. Watt has 10 batted balls as a defensive end after only 7 weeks of the season. The record for batted balls by a defensive linemen is 13 for an entire season.

The dominance that J.J. Watt and the Houston Texans are showing has seemed unbeatable. The Texans have led by at least twenty points in every game that they have played this season with the exception of two weeks ago when they came out and laid an egg against Aaron Rogers and the Green Bay Packers.

Doubt flooded the band wagon as outsiders feared that the Texans were pretenders. Houston responded by putting a shellacking on the Baltimore Ravens to the tune of 43-13. While the Ravens defense is suffering from a rash of injuries, the Baltimore offense has been one of the better units in the league in 2012 … that is until they faced the Texans at Reliant on Sunday.

The Texans shut down the Ravens offense in every phase of the game. Baltimore managed just 176 yards of total offense and only twelve first downs, two by penalty, in the entire game.

The Houston Texans had the week off, but don’t expect them to come out flat after the rest. This team is one of the more focused groups in the league. The rest of their schedule is fairly weak with only the Patriots and Bears looking like reasonable challenges.

It would appear that the road to the Super Bowl will in fact have to go through Houston and if you’ve never been to a playoff game in Reliant, it’s a pretty tough place to play if you are the visiting team.

Give credit to Gary Kubiak and Wade Phillips, but also to Bob McNair and General Manager Rick Smith.

This franchise is built to last and you can expect to see this team on top for several years to come.