Joe Mixon and The End

The Texans held a two-score lead with 10:32 to play in the fourth quarter. It was the kind of lead that felt mostly safe given the overall play of the Chargers offense on the day, but playoff games are weird. Ladd McConkey and Justin Herbert had connected for an 86-yard touchdown strike on Los Angeles’ last drive. The blocked extra point that was returned for two points kept the Texans comfortably ahead, but when a team has been as inept on offense as this one has at times looked, this could have still headed to nail-biter territory. Or at the very least backdoor cover territory.

Instead, the Texans had their best drive of the season. It went 14 plays for 74 yards, and while it had some scrambles, it had just one pass. The Chargers were down 20 points and had 3:42 left when they got the ball back.

Joe Mixon has infiltrated the fantasy football RB1 sphere this year because of his usage rate — it’s been truly phenomenal how large a share of the Texans RB pie he has taken this year. Dameon Pierce had 40 carries, but 19 of them came against the Titans in Week 18 after Mixon took a seat. Third place among running backs in carries is Cam Akers, who notably is a Minnesota Viking. He had 40 carries of his own. Finally we have Dare Ogunbowale with 30 carries. To put that into perspective, Saquon Barkley ran for 2005 yards this year, Jalen Hurts carried the ball 150 times, and backup Kenneth Gainwell still ran 75 times, or about what Pierce and Akers did combined. Mixon also picked up 52 targets, which makes him third amongst Texans that will play on Saturday now that Tank Dell and Stefon Diggs are done for the season. Because of the missed games, Mixon’s target rate per game is tied for ninth in the NFL with Jahmyr Gibbs.

But what I’m not sure people who don’t watch this team intimately understand is that: This running game sucks, but it’s not Joe Mixon’s fault. Mixon has been (legitimately) frustrated at times this year by the blocking and the inability of the blocking to get him to where he needs to go. A lot of the yards this team has picked up are because he gets more than the blocking would say that he should. And I think that’s an area where advanced statistics are still struggling a bit.

Man, Free: A Football Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Mixon has 89 rushing yards over expected this year per NFL Pro, but I think that undersells him in a few ways. For one thing, in the year of the veteran running back finding a new home to shine in, his home is not shiny. For another, RYOE is weighted towards the extra yards of long touchdown runs in a way that I think is statistically interesting but not actually "fair” to a back that doesn’t break many. Mixon had one carry over 50 yards this year. Dameon Pierce had two in 40 carries. Pierce had more RYOE on the season because of those two runs and his good Week 18 jaunt, but we saw what happened last year when Pierce was used as a main back behind (arguably a better version of) this line. If running is by nature inefficient, and running a lot makes it harder to avoid dry spells where the inefficiency really hits you, the fact that Mixon was able to take the workload he has behind this line and turn it into anything positive is remarkable.

I say all this to lead to: This drive was Mixon’s magnum opus. A throat-stepping that felt unlike any drive I’ve ever seen the Texans have in any of their playoff victories. Last year’s Wild Card win was much more out of hand by the third quarter and didn’t feature a quarterback anywhere near as dangerous as Justin Herbert. The old playoff wins of 2011 and 2012 (boy do I feel old typing this) were 19-13 and 31-10 wins over Andy Dalton. The Bill O’Brien wins came against Literally Connor Cook and Not Yet Put Together Josh Allen.

So before the Texans walk into what I am assuming will be their final game of the year, let’s talk about this drive.

It started with an innocent little dumpoff to Cade Stover on a bootleg — not the kind of play you think about too often this year except for about how inept the Texans have been at them. Then Mixon started to get fed:

This is the kind of combo block you almost never see the Texans make on tape this year. C and RG — Patterson and Scruggs — wall off Poona Ford. Scruggs actually gets to the second level. Tony Jefferson honors Stroud a little too hard on the outside to give Mixon space to cut it back. I won’t say that Blake Fisher covered himself in honor on this play against Khalil Mack but between Mack fighting so hard inside and Jefferson’s aggression there’s a natural hole.

Now here’s a more typical-looking Mixon play from this season: Right tackle playing left guard Tytus Howard is bulldozed backwards far enough to interrupt the tight end on his way to the other side of the line. Teair Tart flashes in front of Mixon. But Mixon takes a purposeful hop to his right while giving Stover enough time to get in front of the man he’s supposed to block, then busts it outside as fast as he can. Stover and Metchie get just enough of their men to get Mixon a runway to Kristian Fulton, who he bowls past for extra yardage to set up second-and-3.

The Texans would take it to third-and-1, then give it to the guy everyone knew was getting it on third-and-1:

Your key player on the left side is Morgan Fox, he actually manages to shed Laremy Tunsil and get Tunsil off balance, but the pulling Scruggs manages to get just enough of Fox (and his own assignment) to keep the hole open. Focus your eyes on Howard and Patterson double-teaming Otito Ogbonnia to create that hole. Mixon bursts through. First down.

This next two yards I have to give to the blocking:

Particularly after 18 weeks of Texans football, the size of that hole feels like a fever dream. Mixon didn’t take full advantage of it. They’d give it back on the next play, when a man went through Patterson’s responsibility after Scruggs pulled — that was more of a schematic loss than anything. Now we come to the one C.J. Stroud contribution I’ll be taping:

Metchie’s route is completely smothered inside. Xavier Hutchinson is in the danger zone with a linebacker fairly close to the path of where you’d want to put that ball. Neither other receiver is open, and Joey Bosa has beaten Blake Fisher. Stroud said after the game that he knew he’d be running more than usual because of the lack of a spy, but this was more of a run for necessity’s sake. Very lucky that Daiyan Henley followed the back immediately to create the hole for it, but I’ll take a little luck.

The Texans do not get the first down on call here, but sneak it on fourth down. (Great block by Patterson.) The clock continues to bleed. Back to Mixon on first down:

Great blocking all around and especially by Robert Woods on the edge to get his man without it being a hold. Mixon baptizes Deane Leonard.

The Chargers officially hit timeout mode after this run, although they were ruled to not have to use one because Mixon stepped out per officials. Given the way that the game was going, at this point I was thinking “here comes another field goal.” Mixon ran for one total yard on the first two carries, the second of which came against this box look:

Wonder why that one failed.

Third-and-9. The Texans run the ball again. Except instead of the stuff that leads to the field-goal attempt, Mixon and lead blocker Robert Wood do this:

Great seal by Tunsil. Great combo by Howard and Patterson. Woods gets enough of a block on the safety to give Mixon yardage close to the first down. Then the Texans actually finish the drive on fourth-and-1, with the defense thinking sneak:

This one’s simple mathematics. One side of the line, counting the center, has eight defenders. The other has three. Laremy Tunsil gets his praise, of course. Howard, too, looked excellent on this play. But can we talk about the seal by Irv Smith on the outside? Texans tight ends have not blocked anything all season. That might be the most memorable block I can remember, so of course it comes when the third-string tight end has to play as Cade Stover fractures his collarbone.

Then there’s Mixon. The play only needed a yard, but he stiffarms Henley, and he gets 16 more.

The older I’ve gotten the more I’ve come to appreciate the good moment you have over the inevitable fact that all but one team will win the Super Bowl. The Texans have never had a drive quite like this in their playoff tenure. It was enough to make me feel almost delusional, especially after a regular season where they were 27th in the NFL in rushing DVOA and felt like they were at times 34th.

Do I think the Texans are going to win this week? I don’t. I don’t even know if Mixon will be healthy on Saturday. (Questionable, ankle, DNP in practice on Thursday.) I come into this as realistic as I can be: At some point in Texans history they will probably win a playoff game that they shouldn’t, but Patrick Mahomes has a pretty good playoff record in games that he should win.

Regardless of Saturday, I’ll always be glad that for one moment I got to feel what it must be like to have an offense that can finish a team off. Give Irv Smith 25 point-of-attack blocks on Saturday.