After a good start, things went downhill quickly in Cleveland for the Texans. The Texans offense repeatedly marched into Cleveland territory, only blow opportunities left and right. A fumble by Owen Daniels. A tipped-pass interception from Matt Schaub, and later a terrible pass from Schaub that was also intercepted. That’s three more turnovers against only one takeaway. The offense was absolutely abysmal against the NFL’s last-ranked defense, and Jamal Lewis ran wild on the Texans’ defense. It all added up to a 27-17 loss.

Despite the points given up, the Texans defense again deserves credit.
After holding the high-powered Saints offense to 10 points last week, the Texans did well to hold Cleveland to 27 points. They didn’t put a ton of pressure on Derek Anderson, but they did well on 3rd down for most of the game considering how often they were on the field. Mario Williams recorded his sixth sack of the season, and though the statistics don’t show it - the defense picked their spots and made some huge stops. Unfortunately, the seemingly inept offense often couldn’t do much more than three-and-out for a long stretch of the game. As a result, the Texans defense was often right back on the field after exhausting themselves against a vaunted Browns offense. The Browns owned Houston in time of possession, winning that battle 35:23 to 24:37.

One area where the defense deserves some criticism is their end-of-half play. It seems almost a sure thing this season (and in the past) that the Texans will give up points late in a half. The Browns were able to get a late first-half touchdown, marching the ball down the field seemingly at will. Having poor defense after the two-minute warning is not something a winning team will ever have. This certainly isn’t a playoff year for Houston, but if they hope to get there next year defensive coordinator Richard Smith (or his eventual replacement) is going to have to drastically improve the two-minute defense.

Gary Kubiak made some questionable decisions today.
It’s becoming kind of a broken record, but coach Kubiak definitely provided some head-scratchers today. Specifically, Ron Dayne was running the ball very well in the first half of the game - but to start the second quarter, Jacoby Jones was stopped for an eight yard loss on an end around. Once again, the Texans tried to get cute on offense, and once again - disaster. Now, had this been a huge gain for the Texans, of course it would be considered a brilliant call - but when your running game is already effective against the worst defense in the NFL - what reason is there to get cutesy? In my book - there is no reason. You run the ball the right way until the other team proves they can stop it.

Secondly - where was Andre Johnson today? Well, he was matched up against a backup corner, with excellent Browns rookie Eric Wright out for the game because of an injury. Yet - the Texans stubbornly kept to their gameplan, rather than take advantage of the opportunities that were presented to them. Only in garbage time did the Texans start to exploit this matchup, but by then of course it was far too late.

Third - why not give the hurry-up offense a try a few times a game? Schaub seems to excel in garbage-time and when the hurry-up offense is in effect. Clearly the offensive plan wasn’t working in the second half on Sunday. Instead of changing things up with cute gadget plays, why not try something that plays to the strength of your quarterback and leader? I’m not saying that the Texans should suddenly become the Jim Kelly-led Buffalo Bills of the 1990’s… but why not just give it a shot in a game situation that normally wouldn’t call for the hurry-up? What could it possibly hurt at this stage of the season?

It was a shaky performance by Schaub after he looked so good last week.
Schaub has always been advertised as a ‘very good but not great’ quarterback. In his tenure with the Texans thus far, that’s exactly what he’s been. He looked efficient, composed, and on-target last week against New Orleans. This week he started fast, but made some bad decisions to finish with two interceptions in addition to his two touchdown passes. The first pick was a tipped pass, but it wasn’t exactly a perfect pass by Schaub, so you can’t totally blame the receiver. The second interception was just a bad decision, and was all on Matt for sure. It’s also worth noting that Schaub’s second touchdown pass was a garbage-time score with the hurry-up offense.

With Ahman Green on the bench (again), Ron Dayne logs another solid performance.
Dayne averaged 4.9 yards per carry Sunday, but only ran the ball 16 times. It was by no means a dominant performance, but Dayne picked up several first downs and wasn’t stuffed at the line as he so often was in the first half of the season. Some of that was good run-blocking by the offensive line, but let’s be honest - we’re still talking about a Browns defense that is statistically worst in the league. The fact that the ground game couldn’t eat more clock and generate more points is just another indication of how bad Houston’s offense was today.

The 2007 Texans special teams, Then & Now
Then - Jerome Mathis running a kickoff back for a touchdown against Indianapolis. He was a threat to score every single time he touched the ball.
Now - Mathis is on the Injured Reserve list (again), and Dexter Wynn struggles to return kicks beyond the 30 yard line.

Then - Jacoby Jones going crazy in the pre-season… regularly making long returns and returning multiple punts for touchdowns in the pre-season.
Now - Jacoby Jones hasn’t been the same since his separated shoulder. He’s showing signs of coming around, but still hasn’t shown that game-breaking speed and potential that he flashed so much early on.

Then - Matt Turk booming long punts to get the Texans out of trouble deep in their own territory.
Now - Ex-Texans punter Chad Stanley has apparently been wearing Turk’s uniform and sneaking onto the field. Either that or Turk somehow replaced his leg with a large wet noodle.

Highly-anticipated rematch against Tennessee is next up.
You can bet next week’s game is going to go down to the wire. The Texans will be coming off a tough loss to Cleveland, and they’ll (hopefully) be motivated enough by what happened in Houston against the Titans earlier in the season. For Tennessee’s part, they’re just going to hope to stop the bleeding. After such a strong start, the Titans have fallen down the standings in the AFC South, and Vince Young has been playing terribly for quite some time now.

The Tennessee defense has finally proven to be beatable recently, and just as predicted - the Titans have been losing. Their embarrassing 35-6 loss to the Bengals Sunday was their third dropped game in a row, and check out this for a statistic - in his last seven games, Vince Young has thrown two touchdowns and 11 interceptions. You can spin all you want about him having bad receivers and no support on offense, but that is terrible quarterback play. Vince is officially in the throes of a brutal sophomore slump.

It’s going to be a long week in Houston. Kubiak should be killing these guys in practice. There’s no excuse for the horrific turnover numbers the Texans have put up this season, and with the tough schedule they have coming up - finishing with an 8-8 record is going to take a monumental effort. Expect a low-scoring fight to the finish next week. The Titan defense should be licking their chops after the way the Texans played against such a bad Browns unit. On the other hand, the improving Texans defense should be able to make some things happen against Vince and that weak Titan offense. We’ll see what happens. Hopefully there will be happier news this time next week.

Please visit www.HoustonDiehards.com for much more!

Be first to comment this article

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.6
AkoComment © Copyright 2004 by Arthur Konze - www.mamboportal.com
All right reserved