What Our Biggest Concerns To Come Out Of Texans' Loss To Titans?

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After the Texans lost 32-27 to the Tennessee Titans, Payne and Pendergast discuss their biggest concerns on a Reaction Monday.

Transcript

00:00I am Sean Pendergast. He is Seth Payne. How are you doing this morning, my friend?

00:04I'm, uh, I'm, I'm miserable, Sean. I'm, uh, I'm absolutely miserable. This is,

00:08you know, I, you know, I'm miserable, especially because this is exactly the kind of game

00:13where afterwards somebody that expected the Titans to win can very, very easily say,

00:18well, what'd you expect? Because really every single thing that I worried about going into

00:24this game where I said, Hey, this could be a good gauge, even though the Titans are a bad team,

00:29the Titans do some things that the Texans have struggled with. And then boom. Oh, shot plays

00:34by the offense. Yep. There you go. By the T the Titans, you know, the defense susceptible to big

00:41plays that, okay. Got that. All right. Uh, are you able to run the ball versus a team with a

00:47physically dominant defensive line? Not even close. Not even close. Lions, Vikings, the Texans

00:54have been able to do a single damn thing against them. All of Joe Mixon's powers are, uh, rendered

01:00moot or mute, whichever one's proper there. Whichever one is the worst one. Yeah. Hey,

01:05Hey, you guys have gotten bitten by injuries before. Have you fixed that? Oh, sure. We got

01:10that. No, no, you don't have that fixed whatsoever. But then the, but then the weirdest thing is damn

01:17it. I'm missing a 28 yard field goal. That's a record for ties, a record for

01:2350 plus yard field goals. Yep. Yep. For the season. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

01:27I'm missing one of the obvious things. I'm missing one. Oh, just not being himself.

01:32Well, and throw in penalties too, because they had nine penalties in the second half of this

01:36football game and none of them came at a time. It felt like at least where the penalties were,

01:41you know, somewhat benign, like, Oh, okay. It's a false start at midfield. It's first in 15.

01:46At our own 45. Now, no, no, no. You got illegal blindside blocks on the last drive of the game.

01:53So you were starting at the eight instead of the 27 yard line. You know, you were,

01:58you were getting holding pen. There's never a good time for a holding penalty.

02:01And this offensive line has holding penalties in it. Back to back false starts to turn a third and

02:06six into a third and 16 at midfield, you know, just think just, just, yeah. So, I mean, I'll

02:13throw you, you, you have a nice list. I'll throw the penalties in there with it as well.

02:17Like the, the procedural stuff. And this is where it all comes back on Bobby Slowik. Look,

02:22whenever you're looking at something and it's really hard to define exactly what's wrong with

02:26it. Hell yeah. Blame the manager. You walk into a restaurant and everything's just a little bit

02:30off. Like this is the worst Denny's I've ever been in fire. The manager. Yeah. Because I'll

02:35tell you what I can't take Sean. I cannot take seeing another Nico Collins, huge play called

02:42back for something damn procedural, right? Including last week with Laramie tonsil too

02:47far downfield. Simple. That's a detail. Fix that. Don't execute like a bunch of slack jawed idiots

02:54out there. You get another Nico Collins back because of a legal motion, two men in motion,

02:59all this 80 in stuff. Yeah. You're going to lose. You're going to lose versus the Titans.

03:04You're going to lose to the Jags on Sunday. If you do this stuff on the road. Oh wait,

03:09Hey, what's this team going to do in their playoffs? Do you think they'll run up against

03:12the team that has good defensive linemen at some point? Hey, do you think they might run

03:16up against a team that can kill you with shop? Where, where in the playoffs are they going to

03:22face a quarterback as good as we'll love us? You know, I just saw a hundred percent.

03:28We wondered, okay, how much could you actually learn from a game versus the Titans? We learned

03:32a lot. Yeah. They are not ready for prime time. They are regressing and getting worse as the

03:37season goes along. They've lost four of their last six games. They're not a, they're not a good

03:41football team. They're not, they're not. And here, here's the biggest, the biggest concern for me.

03:47This is by far the biggest concern is that the two biggest beacons of hope for this franchise,

03:54starting last season in training camp, where D'Amico Ryan's as the head coach and CJ Stroud

04:00is the quarterback and both, both and D'Amico asked us to put it on him and that cut we played

04:05in coming in. They are both showing serious flaws right now. I'll start with D'Amico and

04:11this is a big one. I have serious questions right now. There's a lot that comes with D'Amico Ryan's.

04:16It's really, really good. And a lot of it, we don't see on a day-to-day basis because it's

04:20the rejuvenation of the building and the franchise as a whole. And I acknowledge that those things

04:25are important. I think, I think that energy is a lot of what fueled you to getting to 10 and

04:29seven last year with a very young football team. I acknowledge that that is important and it will

04:34be important moving forward. And this is me, this is not me bailing on D'Amico Ryan's, but I have

04:38serious questions. You're talking about Seth, the list that you had are systemic things that have

04:45reared their heads all year long, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. And the solution

04:49has been to continue to trot out the same thing every week, the same scheme, the same methodology,

04:55the same mentality, the same guys every single week. I have serious questions as to whether D'Amico

05:02Ryan's is what I'll call a wartime consigliere. You see the movie, The Godfather. Remember they,

05:06they fired Tom, the lawyer who was the consigliere to, to veto Corleone because,

05:11hey man, you're a great consigliere when times are good and business is booming. But when things

05:16are going a little sideways and you need a little bit more meanness, a little more gumption, a little

05:22more, got to make some changes here. You're not the right guy. And I'm not saying fire D'Amico

05:26Ryan's, but what I am saying is there are questions right now as to whether or not he's the right kind

05:31of head coach to solve these serious problems that they have right now, because there have not

05:36been any solutions yet. The only change that's been made is cause CJ Stroud landed on top of

05:41Kenyon Green on a play that Kenyon Green screwed up. Other than that, it's the same stuff on the

05:46offensive side of the ball. People can point the finger at Bobby Slowick. This is D'Amico Ryan's

05:50problem too. And it might even be a bigger D'Amico Ryan's problem now. That's my, that's my question.

05:56Like, dude, this is the first serious thing you've had to fix with this team since you got,

06:00last year was a honeymoon. Stuff could go wrong and we didn't care. People care this year. And I

06:05think you're doing a pretty good job as a defensive coordinator. Big plays allowed, notwithstanding.

06:09By and large, this defense has been very good. The offense has not, and the offense is getting worse.

06:15And that goes to the second thing. CJ Stroud is getting worse. On your watch,

06:20the year was outplayed by Will Levis yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. It's unacceptable.

06:27It wasn't particularly close. You know, CJ's interceptions over the last few weeks have been

06:35decidedly non-rookie CJ Stroud interceptions. I think they're ones that he wouldn't have thrown

06:40in his rookie season. Yeah. This is, it's, it's getting, this is spiraling quickly.

06:47The only good thing that I heard once yesterday was when Jimmy Ward was on the post game with

06:51you and Clint. And, and he said, Hey, he, and Jimmy's about as honest as it gets. I mean,

06:57he was very, he, he was very open about his own bad play early in the game. But just that there

07:03isn't, there's no chatter from guys, you know, whining about this, whining about that, at least

07:08not that he's heard. So like the overall, the core DNA of the team, it's not like it's a bad team

07:15full of bad dudes, but they have severe under performances offensively right now. And none of

07:20it's getting better. And, and like, and the problem is when you look at the offensive lineman

07:25individually, one by one, there are plenty of good teams that have various, they'd have average

07:31offensive lineman out there, but who aren't just so routinely getting eviscerated and, or making

07:37idiotic, idiotic plays that make it. And they're just, they've shown no, okay, you're not a big

07:44physical offensive line. Then you've got to show some level of expertise and scrappiness or what

07:51have you in developing an outside zone run game. They do nothing. They do nothing. The, this was

07:57of all the things D'Amico said in the post game, I thought he was going to say,

08:01this was, this one was not one of them. This was not his finest moment as the head coach of this

08:06team. Sorry about that. This was, that was not my finest moment as a host. This was not

08:14D'Amico's finest moment. He put the game yesterday on, he put the loss on the defense yesterday.

08:19The concern for me is we need to play complimentary football, right? We play

08:24complimentary football, we win games. When we don't, we're not relying on one side, right,

08:30to carry the entire team. So whatever happens, like our offense gave us enough points to win

08:37the game. So that starts with the defense. We didn't do enough to stop them. We didn't stop

08:41the run and we didn't run the ball well and we gave up way too many points on defense. So our

08:46offense did plenty. They gave us no points in defense. We have to be able to stop them.

08:51I was shocked by that. I was shocked. I was shocked. The offense gave you 20 points. I was

08:55shocked. The offense gave you 20, but they didn't give you 27. The defense gave you seven of those.

08:59They gave you 20 points. I was, I was shocked. You don't have to point fingers at one side or

09:04the other. Like you can say that both sides, cause the defense did some good things, but yes,

09:08ultimately those backbreaking huge plays count for the defense. I totally understand.

09:14Complimentary football can be bad. Complimentary football too. It can be

09:18a thing where all sides have failed, including special teams. By the way,

09:21Kymie Fairbairn last I checked as a specialist, he shanked a 28 yard field goal. The offense

09:26got gifted 10 points, but they got gifted seven points by Jimmy Ward on a pick six.

09:32As far as the points, the offense actually scored. They had a one play drive in the first 15 seconds

09:36of the game. Thanks to Damien Pierce on an 80 yard kickoff. And then they got gifted a possession

09:42on a muffed punt where they, they, they managed four plays for seven yards and kicked a 54 yard

09:48field goal. Like that's half the points they scored. They, they, the longest, they had a 78

09:53yard drive for a touchdown. Other than that, first half per chance, it was in the first half set.

09:59Yeah. That's when it happens. It's not in the second half of any of these games.

10:02Other than that, the longest drive they had was a 55 yard drive for a field goal.

10:06Like that's, I'll tell you another one. You know, how do you point the finger at the defense

10:10as opposed to the offense? Especially when my God, Oh, is there anything worse than a Texans

10:16takeaway on defense these days? Because you can just dial up three points at best out of the

10:21offense. Like, Oh boy, here we go. It was just way to, Oh, we're going to have a six play nine

10:26yard drive somehow because at some point in offensive lineman is going to get penalized.

10:31And Oh, I'll tell you the most frustrating and infuriating one. This goes on Bobby Sloak and

10:37D'Amico is just simply that fourth and short on your own 40 decide whether to go forward or not.

10:43CJ is looking at a sideline for a call. Instead you, you roll out, you bring the punt team out

10:50there and they take a delay a game. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on?

10:55Yeah. It's it's, it's a yesterday. Not only, I mean, look, yesterday was a clown operation on,

11:01on, on every level you lost to the Tennessee Titans and we'll have us at home and we'll have

11:05us pieced you. So yeah, I'm not sitting here saying, no, it's not. It was the offense,

11:10not the defense. It was both. It was both the defense. I mean, how many times is Cody suits

11:17pointed out this yesterday? Like you're getting to the point now, how many teams have been this

11:22weird? You've lost a game where you had five interceptions on defense and still managed to

11:26lose that. You have eight sacks yesterday, seven in the first half it's seven, eight sacks yesterday

11:34and yet got pieced by the guy who had gotten sacked eight times. We'll love it. Started off.

11:39What was the streak? 11 for 11. Did it go beyond that? He was nine for nine and 11 for 12 at points

11:46that I looked at the box score. Yeah. He was 11 for 12 at halftime. So yeah, it was yeah. When he

11:51wasn't getting sacked, he was completing big chunk plays down the field. It was one or the other.

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