What was the good, bad, and ugly from the Texans 21-13 loss?
This is usually a next day feature here at Battle Red Blog. Having a Thursday night game affords me the advantage of running this on Monday while also having a few days to cool off following the defeat. Hopefully, this makes the analysis more dispassionate than it would have been on Friday morning.
This is just a reminder that we are looking at more than just the game between the Houston Texans and New York Jets. We are looking at the whole season and now that we are at the virtual halfway point, these things start to take on added significance. This is especially true when we see them happen multiple times.
Key Statistics
Total Yards: Texans 322, Jets 293
Rushing: Texans 36/187, Jets 21/100
Passing: Texans 39/135, Jets 34/193
Sacks: Texans 2, Jets 8
Turnovers: Texans 1, Jets 1
Penalties: Texans 7/60, Jets 9/83
Time of Possession: Texans 33:42, Jets 26:18
Tytus Howard talked about how the Texans “let one slip away.” He must have been watching a different game than we were. Yes, the Texans gained more yards than the Jets, but that is the only area where they had a major advantage. The Jets were the ones committing stupid penalties at the worst possible time. The Jets were the team with a wide receiver that inexplicably dropped the ball before crossing the goal line. This game wasn’t one that slipped away.
Of course, Howard might be trying to deflect some of the blame from his unit. We will get there in due time though. This is still a 6-3 football team that still has a comfortable lead in the AFC South. All criticisms have to be offered with that idea in the background. Things could obviously be much worse.
The Good
I spent most of last season lamenting any time the Texans handed the ball off to a running back. I called them wasted downs and that was particularly true when Dameon Pierce was the running back. Thursday night might have been the best overall running effort of the season when you consider that they spent much of the second half behind and C.J. Stroud also got in on the fun.
Simply put, Joe Mixon just makes this a better football team. He has 609 yards rushing in six games this season. He is averaging nearly five yards a carry and has scored seven total touchdowns on the season. He had the Texans only touchdown in this game. Recent weeks have almost made this season a complete 180. You’d rather see the team running the football with Mixon than anything else.
I have to imagine that this looks more like the kind of football that DeMeco Ryans envisioned when he took the job in the first place. I don’t know if the run blocking is just THAT much better than the pass blocking or if Joe Mixon is just that good. I’m leaning on the second when you consider that none of the other backs have enjoyed consistent success like he has.
The Bad
To put it simply, this team is bad in the red zone. A part of it is the offensive line issues. Some of it is the condensed space make it more difficult for wide receivers and tight ends to get open. However, most of it rests on the shoulders of Bobby Slowik the offensive coordinator. There have been some bizarre play calls and all of them seem to happen in the red zone.
Thursday night had two more of those instances that cost the Texans points. One of them saw C.J. Stroud cough up the ball when Kenyon Green got beat by Quennen Williams. A part of that is on Green needing to block better. A part of that is on Stroud doing a better job with pocket awareness and protecting the football. However, the bigger question is why you have your worst lineman blocking their best defensive lineman one on one?
Not to be outdone, he then dialed up a halfback pass to Stroud in the second half when they were in the red zone again. This was a drive where the Texans got bailed out on fourth down, took the ball back inside the ten and then somehow wound up with zero points. Sure, if you give them the three points here, give them the three points on the other Fairbairn miss, and give them a field goal on that first possession in the red zone then the Texans win 22-21. Yes, that’s a lot of ifs, but that is how many points this team is leaving on the field. That’s assuming they score only field goals and not touchdowns. It is not an exaggeration to claim that Bobby Slowik cost the team this game.
The Ugly
I’m staking my claim right now. If Nick Caserio does not add a lineman before the trade deadline he will be the “horse’s ass” on my podcast two weeks in a row. The hole at left guard was a glaring one all offseason and absolutely nothing was done about it. We just all collectively hoped that Kenyon Green would figure it out. We can all be mad at Green and maybe that makes us feel better, but ultimately this is on Caserio and Ryans. There should have been a backup plan. There wasn’t one. That’s on them.
Now, we get to the aftermath. A coach’s job is to take what he has and do the very best he can with it. We are at the halfway point. You can certainly talk about things getting better, but they aren’t getting better. I don’t know if guys are underperforming or the coaching is not there. At this point I could honestly care less. Finger pointing doesn’t solve anything. You look at what you have and deal with it.
This team clearly performs better with quicker run plays and quicker pass plays. Why are we still running so many slow developing run plays and plays that call on Stroud to survey the landscape for five or six seconds? These are plays that just haven’t worked. You rip them out of the playbook and develop quicker plays that seem to work better. It is the inability to adjust that is maddening here. This is what you are. You might as well accept it and adjust accordingly.