Dump Palmer NOW!!!

[Porky]

It's nice to see that they were in mid-season form tonight. Oh, not the players. The knee jerk ***** fans. Someone get me a doctor. I'm about to pass out from a bad case of *****ic post reading.

[RTP2110]

What kind of results do you expect in the preseason? The results don't count, theres no gameplan, and no scouting. My thought on the 1st two series is that goal #1 was test the o-line's zone blocking and to see how guys react to the play going to thier side. If it were regular the season they would not have ran on 2nd & 16. It's the preseason and the main focus is execution so they use this time to continue and work on run blocking. If it brings up 3rd & long who cares, it's just the pre-season. That's what it's all about.

[TexanExile]

Originally Posted by WINTEXANSWIN

He never had a chance as a head coach. Two years is not enough as an expansion head coach. Butch Davis is going to find himself back in the college ranks after this year.

He better stay clear of Miami if that's true--there's still some people around here trying to pull that knife he left between their shoulderblades!

[Erratic Assassin]

Originally Posted by Fiddy

Have you seen how bad the offensive line has looked?!?!?!?!? They are opening no holes for Hollings to run through...

Not only that but the defense was there to greet him in the backfield the second he received the handoff.

We did not control the line of scrimmage. Either one of them.

[Ibar_Harry]

I was out of town again so I didn't see the game. However, did David try to throw any long balls. If he didn't then I quess that's where I would question the coaching staff. You would think this is certainly the time to try that kind of pass at least for practice. It might even cause people to think about the pass even if we don't throw it in the reqular season. Caper's blind spot, if he has one, is the run. The only true back with any possibilities is Davis. From the reports I quess we have to say what happened to the defensive line? Did Mr. Smith show up? Did Wiegert play?

[Erratic Assassin]

Originally Posted by RTP2110

What kind of results do you expect in the preseason? The results don't count.

You're right about that but I don't think it's too much to ask your first team to not get dominated.

Our offensive line was getting pushed around and our defensive line wasn't putting any pressure on Pittsburgh. It's not the end of the world, but our first team should not be playing like a first year expansion team.

[Hervoyel]

Creepy that you should say that EA. I've been making copies of tapes of the 2002 season for the past week or two and converting them to DVD and the Pittsburgh game looked more like 2002 than anything else. Except in the Pittsburgh game the defense didn't show up either. It looked like the 2002 offense combined with the injury riddled 2003 defense. Worst of both worlds. They're going to have a week of pure evil practices I bet.

[texasguy346]

Originally Posted by Ibar_Harry

I was out of town again so I didn't see the game. However, did David try to throw any long balls. If he didn't then I quess that's where I would question the coaching staff. You would think this is certainly the time to try that kind of pass at least for practice. It might even cause people to think about the pass even if we don't throw it in the reqular season. Caper's blind spot, if he has one, is the run. The only true back with any possibilities is Davis. From the reports I quess we have to say what happened to the defensive line? Did Mr. Smith show up? Did Wiegert play?

Carr didn't really throw the deep ball, but then again he didn't have much time to with the play of the O-Line. He connected with AJ for a 10 yd pass that AJ turned up field for like 15 or 20 more yards. The first team offense started to look good on the only scoring drive for the Texans. They got to finish off the drive with a field goal early in the 2nd quarter. Weigert did play, and that made the terrible O-Line play even more surprising. The D-Line looked horrible too. So I wouldn't say that Mr. Smith, Mr. Walker, or Mr. Deloach showed up at all. The coaches had Peek and Babin on the outsides, and Sharper and Wong on the inside for this game. The front 7 as a whole didn't play well, and that contributed to the secondary getting torched. I think it was said best when someone compared this game to the horrible one against the Bengals. It wasn't pretty.

[Doug]

I'm just going to throw something out here but it's just my opinion. First off I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and calm down (except for the people that aren't worked up). I won't get a chance to watch the game till I get home from work today (Thank god for the nfl network!). What I've heard from my friends in Houston is that the Texans came out stinking it up a bit but got rolling just before the first team got taken out. Now if this had been a reg season game, the first team would've been in the whole game which in any other case could've accomplished making up for the previous mistakes. There is no scouting, game plan, etc. This is the preseason. These are the mistakes you're supposed to make now to learn from for future reference. There's not a doubt in my mind, had this been a reg season game our boys possibly would've bounced back and either won the game or made it an extremely close loss. I think it was a darn good learning experience for our rookies. You can't place too much emphasis on the preseason. After all, when it comes down to it the preseason is a series of PRACTICE GAMES. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but an instance is the Arizona Cardinals. I think they went 4-0 in preseason last year and look at their reg season record. I personally feel at this point and time you need to look at your mistakes, correct them and move on. It's definitely not a time for pointing fingers halfway into preseason (especially us as fans) when we take a loss regadless of how badly. Let's be positive people!!!!!!!

[texasguy346]

I think most people have calmed down from the loss by now, but from what I've read on the board the main complaint was the lack of effort and intensity the Texans showed on Saturday. You'll see it too when you watch the game. Most people aren't concerned with the loss itself, but moreso the way we played. I think AJ pointed out in another post that Capers was furious with the team, and rightly so. Would he have been even more upset with the team had it been a regular season game? I think it goes without saying he would (and yet I said it anyway). The starters didn't play the whole game for the Steelers either, and they didn't gameplan for us either. It was essientially domination on both sides of the ball. It's a reason for concern, but it's not a reason to panic. I'm sure when we face Denver we will see a team closer ressembling what we saw against Dallas than we did against Pittsburgh. We will have the benefit of gameplanning like a regular season game, and the starters will see 3 quarters of work. It should give us a better idea of where the team is at, but also the outcome of the game isn't as telling as the way we play throughout the game.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by texasguy346

I think most people have calmed down from the loss by now, but from what I've read on the board the main complaint was the lack of effort and intensity the Texans showed on Saturday. You'll see it too when you watch the game. Most people aren't concerned with the loss itself, but moreso the way we played. I think AJ pointed out in another post that Capers was furious with the team, and rightly so. Would he have been even more upset with the team had it been a regular season game? I think it goes without saying he would (and yet I said it anyway). The starters didn't play the whole game for the Steelers either, and they didn't gameplan for us either. It was essientially domination on both sides of the ball. It's a reason for concern, but it's not a reason to panic. I'm sure when we face Denver we will see a team closer ressembling what we saw against Dallas than we did against Pittsburgh. We will have the benefit of gameplanning like a regular season game, and the starters will see 3 quarters of work. It should give us a better idea of where the team is at, but also the outcome of the game isn't as telling as the way we play throughout the game.

You completely missed the point of that whole post.

[Vinny]

Pittsburgh is traditionally one of the great defenses against the run...so I understand why we tried to see what we have against it. I'm not of the mind that you should get tricky in the pre-season. I am very pleased that we took on the Steelers strength straight-up. We know where we stand now even if it wasn't real flattering. Sometimes you need to get a better feel with how your players stack up to a solid run unit by running base plays and you see what you have physically, man on man, against one of the better run stopping units in the league. Right now we are not as good as Pittsburgh in the trenches or when you compare their front-7 to our front-7. Getting all tricky and finessing our way around their strength would not give us the data we need to get better.

[Lucky]

Originally Posted by Vinny

...Right now we are not as good as Pittsburgh in the trenches or when you compare their front-7 to our front-7.

Considering that the Steelers were without a starting guard and were dead last in the NFL in '03 in rushing ypc, it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. I realize that the starting front 3 sat after 2 series, but I thought our reserves could at least compete. Guess I was wrong.

[Vinny]

I thought we would do a better job defensively against their running game myself, but if you look at who was the worst run defense in the NFL last year it can't be too big a surprise to people not from Houston. It is hard to even isolate individual players who broke down because it was a full scale meltdown in my eyes.

As far as us running on them, I'm not as bummed about the showing. Not many teams will do too well running on Pittsburgh this season. Most of my disappointment centers on the defense's lack of physical play against a smash mouth team with an old back and without their best players.

[Fiddy]

Originally Posted by Vinny

I thought we would do a better job defensively against their running game myself, but if you look at who was the worst run defense in the NFL last year it can't be too big a surprise to people not from Houston. . .

Didnt see it posted, but on Inside the Game on ABC 13 Casserly said that the starting D-line played 2 series and gave up a total of about 25 yards on 7 attempts...

[infantrycak]

The running play in the first two series were:

1st series
Bettis 2 yds.
Bettis 2 yds.
Bettis 5 yds.

2nd series
Staley 1 yd.
Bettis 4 yds
Bettis 3 yds
Bettis 2 yds

Then the wheels fell off

3rd series
Bettis 14 yds
Bettis 10 yds
Bettis 5 yds
Bettis 1 yd--TD

[Panther5407]

Both my dad and I arnt that fond of Palmer. He's done some of the same type of calling last year too.

[El Tejano]

Hmmm, I wonder if maybe we noticed how we went base I formation on 3rd and long so that people wont see much of our 3rd down offense this year thus not allowing them to stop us on 3rd down and improve that stat in the regular season. I don't know call me crazy!

People, the only trophy to win in the regular season for us was the Govenors boot and it is already sitting pretty at Reliant so please be patient with the play calling in the pre season.

[H-TownRules]

Hey, I am fine with Palmer calling the plays, except for the inopportune draw plays. He seems to have a knack for calling a draw play at just the wrong time (I've observed this throughout both seasons) It's gotten to the point that when my family is together watching a game, we joke about the dreaded draw play which feeds off of 3rd and 7-10 yds. Can anybody tell me if we've had any success with these that i just haven't caught or why Palmer keeps calling them? I'd rather see more Reverses ran.

[phan1]

Originally Posted by BigDTexansFan

He calls 2 running plays which don't work, so in 3rd and loooong (which anyone knows is a passing down)..he throws. I mean if he is no smarter than that maybe we need to let David call his own plays, you can't keep calling conservative football take some chances Palmer or let QB call his game we might lose but we sure won't lose games like we have trying to play it SAFE...he did that last week instead of going for end zone when we had ball on 6 he called running plays......I know I saw several times last season where Carr would come off field and talk on phone and then in frustration throw it down...

Ummmm... I don't get it. So if your first 2 running plays get stopped cold, you want him to run the ball again on 3rd and long? And as for last week, our running plays would have gotten us the TD if not for stupid penalties and fumbles. Plus, this is an evaluation period. No one is going to go deep into their playbook in the preseason. All he wants to see is if we can run the ball consistently and if we can throw worth a damn. Right now, I'm not really worried about our offense. We've been able to move the ball better than we have ever been able to, and I don't expect our Caper's D to put up such a pathetic display like it did in Pittsburg when the season starts. The Pittsburg game sucked, but I didn't take it too seriously.

The only thing I really worried about was our O-line, which we've been hyping up alot the past few weeks. You would have thought our O-line would be in the top third of the league the way people have been hyping it up lately.

Also, isn't Palmer responsible for bringing up and teaching some of the best QBs in the league? I think we're pretty lucky to have him actually. However, if he plays too conservative like he did last season (which was understandable for a 2nd year team), than I'm going to raise a few eyebrows.