When your team achieves as monumental a victory as the Houston Texans did on Sunday night at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, you savor it over multiple days. Yes, I fully understand that, on paper, it was merely a competitive 6-6 team that the Texans vanquished, but any fan who’s followed the Texans closely the last several years knows that it was much more than that.
In the process of defeating the Chiefs 20-10 on Sunday Night Football, the Texans also vanquished several narratives, demons, and boogeymen. They won a road game in prime time against a good team. With apologies to last year’s Dallas Cowboys, that hadn’t happened in quite some time. They won in cold weather. C.J. Stroud had been 0-3 in sub-freezing temps since arriving in the NFL.
Most importantly, the Texans defeated the Chiefs, something they had not done since Week 6 in 2019, in a game that featured Deshaun Watson at quarterback, Carlos Hyde at running back, and DeAndre Hopkins at wide receiver. The Texans may never exorcise the demons from blowing a 24–0 lead in a playoff game there in January 2020, but this at least shoveled some dirt onto the grave of the monster they helped create that day.
The king may not be clinically dead, but at the very least, the Texans sent him to hospice care. Now, as we revel in the win two days later, here are some wild numbers from Sunday’s game:
The Texans did a number on Patrick Mahomes
If you’re someone who’s been waiting for whatever magic pixie dust Mahomes had sprinkled on him nine years ago, when he came into the league, to wear off, then get comfortable. Signs of hope are here. The Texans’ defense held Patrick Mahomes to career lows in the following categories — points generated in a home game (10 points), passer rating (19.8), and completion percentage (42.4). Sunday’s game was the only time in Mahomes’ career where he threw no touchdown passes, threw multiple interceptions, and had a completion percentage below 50 percent. It was a glorious night.
The Texans defense is so good, it overcame these numbers from the impotent Texans offense
The Texans’ defense is playing at a historical level of greatness right now, and it’s masking some serious flaws with this team. The most notable one is the fact that the offense from this team is still below average, at best, and they go through lulls where they are basically a college team trying to play pro ball. In the second half of the win over the Chiefs, the Texans had four 3-and-outs for a total of -2 yards during the third quarter. They had a total of 64 yards of offense in the second half, in a game they WON, which would be mind blowing if they hadn’t had just 35 YARDS of total offense in the second half of the win over Buffalo two weeks ago. This defense is galactic spackle slathered over some serious, serious blemishes on this team.
Five weeks ago, the Texans odds of making the playoffs were microscopic, but now…..
There are several sites you can visit to get a playoff probability percentage for the Texans, but they all essentially land in the same neighborhood. The Texans have gone from a team, at 3-5, that was a massive underdog to even sniff a wild card berth, to a team with a 90 percent chance of making the playoffs, and small puncher’s chance (5 to 8 percent) to win the whole damn thing. That’s what this defense has done. They’ve given the city hope, they’ve captured the imagination of the national media, and they’ve killed Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.