What was the good, bad, and ugly from Monday night’s victory?
There are final scores and there are numbers. Those things can tell you a lot, but neither of them tell you the same thing as watching the actual game. Fortunately, we have done all three and can look at everything that went on. In any one game, the numbers can lie. When you take all of the numbers put together they end up telling a story. Through eleven games and we can tell a pretty good story.
Of course, we will start telling that story when we get to the good, bad, and ugly. Suffice it to say, this game was ugly for most of it and that will probably come out in that section. The ugliest gets reserved for the Cowboys. That’s just a bad football team over there and they have few legitimate excuses. Sure, they lost Dak Prescott, but they were bad before they lost Prescott. They are just bad.
The Key Numbers
Total Yards: Houston Texans 391, Dallas Cowboys 388
Total plays: Texans 60, Cowboys 79
Rushing Yards: Texans 25/141, Cowboys 18/64
Passing Yards: Texans 35/250, Cowboys 61/324
Sacks: Texans 5. Cowboys 1
Turnovers: Texans 1, Cowboys 2
Penalties: Texans 9/69, Cowboys 9/66
Time of Possession: Texans 30:37, Cowboys 29:23
There is no way around it, this was an ugly football game. No team wins as ugly as the Houaton Texans. These two teams had Troy Aikman and Joe Buck outwardly talk about drinking. I and some of the other members of the masthead were way ahead of them on this night. There were probably more penalties waved off or declined than total penalties called in some games. Yet, I will get to that in a minute.
The Good
There were two goods from this game. The first one is Joe Mixon. Simply put, he is the MVP so far of the 2024 season. This offense would be a disaster without him, but we will get to that in a minute as well. The other good and the good that deserves a lot more attention is this defense. Mark down two more takeaways and five sacks to the ledger. Danielle Hunter hasn’t been the double digit sack fiend he was in Minnesota, but that might be because he has to race two or three other defensive linemen to the quarterback.
Believe it or not, he and Will Anderson both have 7.5 sacks through 11 games and Anderson has missed two of those games. Denico Autry is sitting on three sacks and he has played only five games. Add in the likes of Kamari Lassiter, Derek Stingley, and Calen Bullock on the back end and you see what this defense has going on.
The secondary dropped at least three interceptions on Monday night that could have made the contest even more one-sided. Quarterbacks just don’t look good when they go up against this defense. When we get to the bye week we will show just how bad it has been for them. They lead the league with the lowest completion percentage against. It’s not even particularly close.
The Bad
It’s hard to look at a 34-10 win and come away disappointed. You can call me a perfectionist if you want, but no Texan can go through the last five weeks without seeing the cracks in the veneer. This team makes far too many errors to be a championship football. We were told this was going to be a championship contender. There are times when they look like one. Hell, they beat the Buffalo Bills and only one other team has done that on the season.
The one play that probably illustrated this more was the first play from scrimmage. It was a Nico Collins catch and run to the house. It was a thing of beauty and the kind of play that is a punch to the throat of an opponent. More importantly, it would have been a confidence boost for him and C.J. Stroud. I suppose it still can be. They have it on tape. It was called off because of yet another Laremy Tunsil penalty. It was a penalty that had nothing to do with the play. It was just stupid.
You had a head slap on a fourth and 20 64 yard field goal attempt. Why? We had key coaching decision blunders throughout the game. When you are up 7-0, take the points and go up 10-0 without having to worry about converting on fourth down. That would have put you up 17-0 and taken away the only Texans turnover. That’s on DeMeco Ryans. Hopefully, he will learn from this in a game that was barely ever in doubt and shouldn’t have been at any point.
The Ugly
I might be out on Bobby Slowik. I hate to be overly negative in a blowout victory. The defense had this game in hand and nearly won the game completely on their own. Maybe it’s because I’m not a boy genius. The obvious brilliance of calling a shovel pass and pitch play in the red zone are just beyond my above average intelligence. Maybe someone can explain it to me like I’m a five year old. You spend eight to ten plays methodically moving the ball down the field, and when you get close to the ten yard line you stop running the plays that go you to the ten yard line. Someone please make that make sense.
We have been seeing this stuff all season. The Cowboys were the worst team in the league at allowing touchdowns in the red zone. You were 50 percent which is close to the league average. That should have been three or four out of four. When it’s third an inches why are you rushing to the line to throw a pass play on a contested route? Just ram it in there and get the damn first down.
When we tack this onto the normal second half swoons that we see week in and week out then the writing is on the wall. Slowik is just not a good offensive coordinator. The offensive line has generally been better the last two weeks with Jarrett Patterson in place of Kenyon Green, but that immediately begs the question: why did it take an injury to replace him? There are just too many nagging things not to point right back to one guy. He has six games and at least one playoff game to fix it.