I think those first two preseason games, when our first team offense was very efficient and just trotted down the field on the first possession of both of those first two games, was a complete fakery.
It was scripted (the plays) and that's why it looked so good. It had been practiced, and so all the players had been through the dress rehearsals (practices leading up to those two preseason games) and each player knew exactly what to do, how to execute each play, etc.
But then you throw those plays out the window, and you try to spend the remaining 98% of the game with adjustments and new plays being called, and the playcalling/adjustments were the wrong call, blockers lost focus, Carr lost focus, WRs lost focus, and the blame-game began.
It's easy to script some plays and march down the field when all 11 players are on the same page because they all practiced the first possession's plays. But throw in the defense's adjustments, and your initial set of plays you use become sniffed out and antiquated against an adjusting and adapting defense. And therefore our Texans coaching staff is half the problem because it makes incorrect adjustments: Capers calls a run, Palmer calls a pass, Capers gets to call his FB dive, Palmer gets to run the trick play, back and forth, back and forth, and the teams catch onto running formations and passing formations, for example.
Because if internal politics and ineptitude in the area of playcalling and adjustments, it placed the offense and the defense at a very distinct disadvantage. As a player, you ran those scripted plays perfectly and they worked. But now, it's almost half-time and I'm receiving the play call from the sideline and as Wong or Carr I'm thinking, "What?! That's not going to work. Why is that being called? Geeez..." and I call the play and it doesn't work and every player on the field gets very frustrated with the coaching staff's inability to correctly adjust on the fly, in a real game situation.
All heads are lost. Complete lack of confidence by the players in terms of trusting their coaches, and then they begin to look different at each other, etc. It's just sad, because this team was competitive before week 17 last year, but something snapped and the players are just refusing to buy into the coaching staff's philosophy.
I think that's what happened. Week 17 of last season was the breaking point, and the offseason didn't help because it gave time for it to get washed away amidst empty promises by Texans coaching staff that this season would be different, etc, etc., and the real problems that existed all these years were unveiled after the second preseason game this year. That's when it was apparent that week 17 was not a fluke. It was the last straw for Texans players who were already overcoming the poor coaching and actually gutting out wins last season...and they just simply have decided to stop being an accessory to the crime that is the Texans coaching staff. You can play along for awhile, but when you see that you're being used...you wise up and stop trying so hard because it was JUST your trying hard in the first place that kept last season from looking more like this season.
That's my view.
