Perhaps the most ominous sign that the Houston Texans may not be a very good football team is that it seems like they are not only losing games, but finding ways to do it that are mindnumbingly dumb and statistically improbable.
On Sunday, for example, the Texans managed to lose 32-27 to the 2-8 (now 3-8) Tennessee Titans. For the third time in the last six weeks, the Texans lost a game in which they won the turnover battle. That’s really hard to do. You almost have to be trying to suck as bad as the Texans suck right now. Also, on Sunday, they had a 7-0 lead 18 seconds into the game, but of course, by the 11 minute mark of the second quarter, they trailed 17-7. TO THE TENNESSEE F’NG TITANS.
The Houston Texans have zero killer instinct. That’s not an opinion, that can be stated as fact. Jimmie Ward said as much to me and Clint Stoerner in the team’s postgame radio show, where he openly said they took the Titans lightly and played down to the level of their opponent.
While I respect Ward’s honesty, I’m not so sure they were “playing down” to anyone. The Texans are 2-4 in their last six games. Within this recent small sample size, they ARE the Tennessee Titans. If you watched Sunday’s game, and then asked someone with no prior knowledge of either team “Which team was 7-4 coming in and which team was 2-8?”, they’d have to flip a coin to decide.
On Sunday, these were two teams stumbling over their own feet, neither really seeming to want to take hold of the game. As a Texans fan, you should be livid. Let’s get to winners and losers:
WINNERS
4. Nico Collins
Well, Collins’ return, second game back since his hamstring injury, obviously wasn’t enough of an elixir to get a win for the Texans, although if his 33 yard catch and run for a touchdown in the fourth quarter wasn’t nullified by a penalty, his return WOULD have likely been the difference in a would be Texans win. For the game, Collins finished with six catches for 93 yards and a touchdown, just another day at the office. Nico Collins is, and will likely always be a bright spot for these directionless Texans right now.
3. Will Levis
Who knew that the quarterback from this game listed in the “winners” section would be the one who answered the question “Where have you improved this season?” last week with a chuckle and a sarcastic “fewer underhand interceptions.” Levis had been turnover machine all season, and for sure, his pick six he threw to Jimmie Ward in the third quarter looked like it might lose the game for the Titans. However, Levis recovered nicely, and finished with a 123 passer rating on the day and 278 yards passing. He was really, really good.
2. Will Anderson
1. Danielle Hunter
You can’t separate these two, so I’ll put them as numbers 2 and 1 on this list. The combination of Anderson and Hunter off the edge is, by far, the best thing the Texans have going for them right now, and it’s a shame that it appears that bookend Pro Bowl defensive end seasons are about to be wasted on a team whose ceiling is “winning a crappy division and getting blown out in the playoffs.” On Sunday, Anderson finished with two sacks, and Hunter had a career day with three sacks, five tackles for loss, and three QB hits. Somehow, the Texans have managed to lose games within the last two weeks in which they had five interceptions (Detroit, Week 10) and sacked the QB eight times (Titans, yesterday).
LOSERS
4. Ka’imi Fairbairn
Fairbairn has been outstanding this season. On Sunday, he kicked his 12th field goal of 50 or more yards this season. However, if you just flat out shank a game tying 28 yard field goal, you are labeled a “loser” for the day. Those are the rules. Sorry, Imi.
3. Texans run game (by proxy, Bobby Slowik)
When the Texans run the ball well, it’s usually due to Joe Mixon’s individual greatness. When they don’t run the ball well, like say, on Sunday against Tennessee (14 carries, 22 yards for Mixon), it’s because the offensive line sucks, and make no mistake, the Texans’ offensive line sucks. They stink at run blocking, they stink at pass protecting. They are putrid and pungent and kind of soft. Still, this doesn’t stop Texans OC Bobby Slowik from voluntarily running the Texans into 2nd and long and 3rd and long all day. I don’t know what exactly Slowik thinks he is coaching. He acts like he is coaching the 1998 Denver Broncos, and the quintessential Mike Shanahan offense. The fact of the matter is that he is coaching an offensive line that might need to be blown up after the season. Slowik SHOULD be coaching for his job these next five games.
2. C.J. Stroud
The magic is gone, for now, at least. The tour de force that was rookie Stroud has given way to a much more jittery version, whose confusing “shooting my shot” with poor decision making and irresponsible ball security. Don’t get me wrong, Stroud is not completely broken. He still makes some amazing throws, and if the team fixes the offensive line and gets him a real OC, the old Stroud will return. He’s only 23 years old. However, when he Texans got the ball with 90 seconds to go, needing a game tying field goal, I had zero confidence Stroud would engineer the drive. This time last season, I’d have been supremely confident.
1. DeMeco Ryans
This is the most disturbing thing about the morass that the Texans find themselves in — the two beacons of hope for the future, Stroud and Ryans, are showing some serious flaws right now. We outlined Stroud above. Similarly, I am still confident long term that Ryans will be a really good head coach. However, we are about to find out if he can be, what they call in the movie The Godfather a “wartime consigliere.” In other words, how is he at solving these very difficult offensive problems? Can he fire guys who deserve firing? More importantly, can he find people who can fix these problems and/or find the solutions himself? In his first year as head coach, Ryans wasn’t faced with any problems even close to what he is experiencing right now. To this point, his solution has been to blame offensive execution, back Bobby Slowik, and talk about how “fixable” the problems are. News flash — that’s not working.
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
