Through the first two winless weeks of this Texans season, as they failed to produce explosive plays with their new downfield threats, there was still something distinctly different about this year’s offense: Even when controlling for win probability in a pair of blowouts, Houston led the league in early-down passing frequency.
Analytics favor this approach, but the Texans’ first-time play caller, offensive coordinator Tim Kelly, promised this wasn’t part of his football philosophy.
“We don’t want to be pass-heavy,” Kelly said this week. “We’d like to be more balanced, and I’ve got to do a better job making sure we’re more balanced.”
To ensure that, Kelly course-corrected in dramatic fashion Sunday, even as results told him to stop. In the Texans’ 28-21 loss to the Steelers in Pittsburgh, Houston’s explosive passing offense showed up in the first half, when the Texans scored all of their points, but a fruitless commitment to the run did them in as they dropped to 0-3. Though David Johnson scored Houston’s first touchdown, he ultimately had the least efficient performance of his career, gaining 23 yards on 13 carries (1.8 YPC).
All of Johnson’s rushing attempts came on first and second downs, contributing to the Texans averaging 11.3 yards to go on third down — the worst mark by a Houston team since 2003.
“We tried to work different schemes, and really nothing worked,” head coach and general manager Bill O’Brien said. “We weren’t able to get to the edge, and we weren’t able to really get up inside too much. So we just have to look at it. … We have to figure out how to get our running game going.”
If the Texans don’t, they could waste more performances from Deshaun Watson like the one the quarterback put together Sunday, completing 19-of-27 passes for 264 yards and two touchdowns to Randall Cobb and Will Fuller. Despite Watson’s efficient stat line, Houston’s offense experienced the ultimate boom-or-bust day. Of the Texans’ seven drives that didn’t result in TDs, all but one ended in a three-and-out. The other died on a Watson interception in the second half, as he was forced outside the pocket and saw the ball sail on him when he threw to the middle of the field.
Perhaps Watson was pressing by that point early in the fourth quarter. After all, his team was faltering, and he was receiving limited chances to turn it around. So many short drives resulted in the Texans’ best player dropping back just 12 times in the second half and attempting only nine passes while Pittsburgh ran 29 more plays than Houston over four quarters.
Facing a Steelers team that came into this game leading the league in both blitz rate and pressure rate, Watson took five sacks and absorbed 13 hits, but his protection was adequate during Houston’s scoring drives, especially when the Steelers chose to rush four.
Eventually, though, with the Texans facing so many obvious passing situations because of early-down failures, it became easy for the Steelers to dial up pressure or blanket the field with defenders.
“With a D-line like that, they can just pin their ears back and just rush, (or) they can drop everyone in coverage and play the sticks,” Watson said. “You’ve got to find the holes and buy some time to let those receivers get the depth that we need. But we got to stay out of that. We got to have positive yards on first and second down and get us in third and manageable.”
O’Brien received a lot of criticism this offseason when he traded away All-Pro receiver DeAndre Hopkins for Johnson, and through three weeks, the deal arguably looks as bad as ever. The player Houston drafted with the second-round pick it got from Arizona, defensive lineman Ross Blacklock, was a healthy scratch Sunday after being ejected from Houston’s Week 2 loss to the Ravens for throwing a punch, and Johnson looks like the player who averaged 3.7 YPC during his final two seasons with the Cardinals — maybe even worse.
The Steelers came into this game ranked first in run defense efficiency, but that alone shouldn’t excuse Johnson’s performance. He didn’t face a single box of eight-plus defenders, according to Next Gen Stats. And on a per carry basis, Johnson managed more than two fewer yards than expected, based on tracking data.
To make matters worse, the Texans aren’t taking advantage of the running back’s receiving ability, which has made him an elite player in the past and was supposed to add versatility to Houston’s offense. Through three games, Johnson, who had two catches for 23 yards Sunday, is averaging 23.7 receiving yards per game. That would represent a career low if it held for the entire season.
Hopkins, meanwhile, entered Week 3 as the league leader in receptions and as a member of an undefeated Cardinals team. He is proof of what Texans receiver Brandin Cooks admitted following the loss to the Steelers: The lack of a traditional offseason is not an adequate reason for Houston’s offensive struggles.
“That’s just a big excuse,” Cooks said. “You look around the league, offenses are playing at a high level. At the end of the day, we didn’t start our season fast. We started this game fast, but we didn’t finish, and that’s on (the offense).”
O’Brien agreed with Cooks on that last part. Though Houston’s run defense faded toward the end of the game for a second straight week, allowing 37 yards on five carries in Pittsburgh’s final 12-play scoring drive — which ended with a 12-yard James Conner touchdown run — O’Brien admitted the unit was probably tired. Houston’s offense didn’t offer its defense time to rest. The Steelers, who scored the game’s final 10 points and averaged 4.4 yards per carry, held the ball nearly 14 more minutes than the Texans did.
“I don’t know why we can play the run well early on and not finish it, so I need to get that answer so we can figure it out,” J.J. Watt said. “… Because you’re gonna lose football games, and we are losing football games, and we need to win.”
Just six teams in the past 40 years have climbed out of 0-3 holes to make the playoffs. The 2018 Texans were one of them, so maybe that can inspire some belief within Houston’s locker room. The postseason’s expansion and the fact the Texans have yet to face a divisional opponent offer reasons for optimism, too.
But with three losses to three of the AFC’s top teams, it’s hard to view the Texans as a true contender, even if they do find a way into the postseason.
Instead, Houston’s trajectory appears to mirror Johnson’s performance Sunday. One futile carry after another, the Texans look like a team headed nowhere fast.
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