Free Friday: The division leader that is somehow also dead
Houston's offense remains in shambles, and it is finally starting to affect their quarterback
I try not to get too high or too low on a team as they make their way through the season, but the Texans passing game has become so irredeemably bad for so many weeks that major changes are necessary. I would call the headline here a half-joke.
C.J. Stroud, to his credit, pointed the finger at himself. And for the first time this year, I think he was right to. This felt a lot like the Packers game as far as constant pressure. I do think things got a bit better when Kendrick Green finally took over for Kenyon Green. But, as the David Carr tales go, you can’t have a quarterback get pressured the most ever in his career for three straight games and not actually have some of that pressure stick with the quarterback and start impacting the feel of the situation. Particularly one who told Kirk Herbstreit before the game that he may be “kinda banged up right now.”
When you take eight sacks, sacks come in all shapes and sizes. The first came on a corner blitz that the Texans seemed to have no answer for — I’ve been writing about this team so long that I actually wrote about dealing with corner blitzes as a problem for a second-year Deshaun Watson. Sacks two and three were on Kenyon Green. Green made Stroud step up in the pocket on the first of the two, a fumble in the red zone that happened as Stroud tried to skinny himself through a tight pocket. He was absolutely destroyed on the second:
Sack four comes on a stunt, with Shaq Mason and Kendrick Green letting Solomon Thomas split them up the middle after Stroud steps up in the pocket. Mason actually threw the defensive lineman to the ground. The problem was he threw him right into Stroud’s foot path. That was the one that led to Stroud on the turf for a few minutes.
Sack five comes courtesy of the highest-paid left tackle in the NFL:
What really struck me on this one is Tank Dell over the middle. This happened on a few of the Texans routes against blitzes — the Texans have someone running free over the middle, but it’s part of an elaborate route. What if Dell had simply stopped before he made it to the zone linebacker, was wide open, you took 8 yards, then moved on? I know that wouldn’t have been “optimal” on third-and-11, but you at least have a chance at the first down that way. The blitz answers are not being made easy for Stroud.
This next one? Looks like Stroud’s problem to me:
Extra blockers are here and deliver. I think he just hangs on Tank Dell too long. That is covered. Hutchinson is drawing the safety to the right side, and once those hips flip, Metchie is there with a good throw. You can tell he’s waiting on it. The throw never comes. Kendrick Green and Juice Scruggs follow up by getting absolutely destroyed on the next rep in stunt protection for sack six. Green gets beat so badly that the man who is supposed to pick him just runs right into him without even a block attempt.
We still got flashes of brilliant Stroud on the deep downfield strikes to Robert Woods and Tank Dell. But no quarterback can build the entire plane out of plays like that. The routine throws that Stroud made so easily last year have become impossible between the pressure and the pressure he perceived in this one. Frankly, given what he said and the hits he’s taken, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t playing through an unlisted injury.
Wrote about it a bit in yesterday’s piece: This team needs competent left guard play, but it’s more than just that. They need to use the mini-bye to get better game plans in place against the blitz, or they will be a skidmark next Sunday night against the Lions. Things just can’t look this hard.
As for the Jets? They save the season temporarily. I thought the offense turned around and started running the ball better when Will Anderson Jr. left the game with his ankle injury — another thing I’d be very concerned about if I were the Texans. The RPO stuff worked, and, well, the Texans have one good cornerback. The Jets were able to get Davante Adams or Garrett Wilson to win one-on-ones against Jalen Pitre and Kamari Lassiter. That is, as they say, the advantage to trading for one of the best receivers of his era.
The Texans found themselves in an untenable position: They couldn’t stop the run without bodies, and they couldn’t stop the two star wideouts in the biggest spots of the game. That is exactly what the Jets were hoping would happen when they traded for Adams.
The only real concern I have about them chasing a wild card spot (besides time and the already-accumulated record) is that their run defense is brutal. It wasn’t just Joe Mixon carving them on the ground, even J.J. Taylor was getting involved. In fact, a low-key reason the Jets win this game is that the Texans probably didn’t commit to the ground game hard enough.