Texans Gamer: Zombie Texans offense revives in time to help defense deposit another totemic 3:30 PM Saturday Win
The dam cracked with one extremely stupid play, and then the Texans played offense like they had never seen themselves for the first 28 minutes.
Chargers 12 at Texans 32
My normal process is that I’m clipping these games live. However, thanks to the NFL playing on Saturday and a well-timed Daycare Illness running through the household, I was forced to watch this game while tending to the child. So normally I’ve got plays, I’ve got some notes, and I am able to put the notes together during commercial breaks. Today, I was trying to commit the notes to my head in the second quarter and it sounded like this:
This team is absolutely dead on offense. Every dropback is painful. C.J. Stroud’s interception looked horrendous. Nick Caserio actually traded up for John Metchie. (Note to self: Soften, he did have leukemia, but also come on.) Somehow they’re both not running enough and getting stuffed when they do run. This isn’t fair to this defense.
And then … and then this stupid thing happened to end a third-and-16:
And it seemed to completely shift everything. The offense, while I wouldn’t say it played well, I would say played better and was better focused. (By which I mean it got the ball to Nico Collins and got the hell out of the way.) The running game worked to the point where it finished the game with a punishing, Joe Mixon-heavy drive.
And through it all, the Super Bowl-caliber defense allowed one long field-goal drive and one fluke big play in the fourth quarter in a game they had built a three-score lead in. And even that felt muted by the fact that Texans special teams bulldozed the extra-point attempt, dunked poor Cameron Dicker into the turf, and returned the ball for the rare two-point Scorigami Beacon:
I didn’t come into this game necessarily expecting the Texans to lose, but how they won was extremely disconcerting. To give us absolutely nothing for 28 of 60 minutes on offense, then shift so far ahead that you’re literally running the ball down Jim Harbaugh’s team’s throat on the final drive of the game … I can’t say I saw it coming. I don’t feel like the same team played the final 32 minutes. But I like that second team.
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.
Houston’s biggest defensive stands kept the game in reach early
