Texans Thursday: Writing about the offense that is hard to write about

The most annoying thing about the Texans offense this season is that there’s not a single “please stop doing the really dumb thing” sore thumb. It’s a whack-a-mole game where when you throw the mallet down on “don’t commit a red zone penalty” what pops up is “suddenly nobody is open” or when you push “please don’t start Kenyon Green” what hits is “Bobby Slowik has asked for something impossible from the wideout on this run block.” By which I mean, this:

So when you look at the stats, what this mixture of like 18 percent amazing quarterback play, 10 percent amazing running back play, 7 percent playcalling wins, 65 percent flotsam creates is just this tepid, 20-25th ranked unit everywhere. It’s true that Slowik runs the ball too much on inappropriate down and distance situations. But other than that I don’t think he’s exclusively calling bad plays. It’s true that Stroud has had more off-beat plays than he did in 2023, but other than perhaps being more passive than he was in 2023 I don’t see major regressions anywhere. It’s just all adding up to less than the sum of the parts.

Run blocking review: Give Robert Woods the game ball instead