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00:00And for the fourth straight time, we get a victorious final call for the Houston Texans
00:04in just the latest, biggest game of the year for them. And this one really was when you consider
00:09that a win now puts the division fully in play for the Houston Texans. In fact, that win
00:15pushes the Colts into second place in a division that they were way out in front for a lot of this
00:21season. The Colts have now lost three out of four. More importantly, the Texans have now won
00:25their last four. They're seven and two now in their last nine. And that 0-3 start has faded
00:32into the distance at this point as the Houston Texans look. There's 60 minutes of Pittsburgh
00:37Steeler football against the Bills today. The Steelers beat the Bills. The Texans are inside
00:42the velvet rope of the postseason heading into week 14 against the Kansas City Chiefs. What a win
00:48today. 20-16 the final score for the first time all year. The Indianapolis Colts held under 20
00:54points by a Texans defense that just continues to be the catalyst for everything that this team is
01:00accomplishing this year. Today did enough to complement that. And now the Texans find themselves
01:06in the exact same spot they've been in each of D'Amico Ryan's first two seasons as the head coach
01:11with a 7-5 record. 7-5 in 2023, 7-5 in 2024, and somewhat miraculously now a 7-5 record in
01:192025. And we want to talk about it with you. This is a great day to be a Texan fan. 20-16,
01:24the final score, 7-1, 3-5, 7-2, 4-6, 10. Jalen Petrie is going to join us along the way. We'll hear
01:30from D'Amico Ryans as we welcome you in. I am Sean Pendergast. He is Clint Sterner. And this has been
01:36a hell of a month of football for this squad. Yeah, it's been fun. Look, man, four straight wins will do
01:41it. And then you talk about how big today's win was. I mean, you all of a sudden give yourself
01:45a little bit of grace as it pertains to just getting in the playoffs the remainder of the
01:50season. You don't have to be perfect. But more importantly, and now you can set your sights
01:55on potentially winning the division. And it's right there at your fingertips. And there's a lot
02:01of football left to be played this season. So this was a big win for the Texans in a sense of now you've
02:07got ultimately two paths to the playoffs. And the big one where you get a home playoff game
02:13is alive and I think fair and justified to talk about at this point in time. So yeah,
02:18man, it was it was a big win. It was an impressive win. I tell you when you beat a team as they have
02:24their own problems and Indy does I get it. But when you beat a team that's been at the top
02:28of the AFC and you you without a doubt can look around and say we didn't play our best football
02:34today. We did. That wasn't our a game, if you will. And you still beat them at their place.
02:39It's a good day. So yeah, great, great win for the Texans. Big win for the Texans. The timing
02:44couldn't be any better. And you needed this one. You needed this one. What did you think of CJ
02:49Stroud's performance today? I thought CJ was fine. I thought he I thought I expected there to be a
02:54lot more rust early on. And while we had we saw some of the same problems with the overall offense
02:59rear its head with penalties and not being able to punch it in getting down inside the 10 yard line,
03:04I thought CJ was great out of the gate. What was it? A 13 14 play drive right there that ended in
03:09a field goal, I believe, ultimately. Yeah. Yeah. So so frustrating how it ended. But but when it
03:15comes to CJ himself, I expected a lot more like that. I heard I heard D'Amico Ryan's I believe
03:21I believe it was Friday. I heard D'Amico Ryan's talk about how they've they've really put an emphasis
03:27on this week at practice getting CJ Stroud as many reps over over the 10 day layoff that you had
03:33after playing Thursday night football last week. Get it get him as many reps as he can get him as
03:38comfortable as he could. And I remember thinking at that point, I heard that Friday, I believe,
03:41on my way home after doing our show from BB's down in Pearland. I heard D'Amico say that and I
03:46thought, boy, that makes me feel really good. If the emphasis has been on a get him reps, get him
03:50reps, get him comfortable. Maybe he can shake that rust off and maybe we don't see much of it
03:55as we watch the game. And I didn't I didn't see much of it. Look, obviously, he wants the he wants
03:59the the the throwback on the interception. That was a force. Obviously, I think we're going to
04:04watch the film and there were some opportunities on second and 10 to put yourself in third and short
04:08that he's probably going to want back. You know, anytime you have the penalties, the alignment
04:14penalties in particular that the Texans had in that second drive tonight, you know, anytime you have
04:19those kinds of penalties, I think a part of that is the quarterback is responsible for either
04:25correcting in the huddle or fixing at the line of scrimmage so you don't have to waste a time out or you
04:29don't get penalties. So some of the things we can be critical of. But overall, I thought CJ was fine.
04:34I thought he threw it well. He moved well. He seemed to be in a really, really good headspace,
04:38man. So good to see the starting quarterback back out there. And you look up and you go,
04:44that's kind of a quiet day, kind of a kind of a blase blase day for the quarterback.
04:47But oh, he threw for damn near 300, 274 yards. He was 22 of 35, which, you know, by his standards is not
04:54great. You know, it's somewhere around, it's somewhere around 60% thereabouts. But if you
05:01watch the game, I thought when he was other than the interception and maybe one or two other throws,
05:07a lot of the incompletions were due to him throwing the ball away, being smart with the
05:11football, you know, getting rid of it, guys on him, I'm going to get rid of it, you know,
05:14throws it away, that kind of thing. So yeah, I thought he was, I thought he didn't, he didn't
05:19look rusty to me other than the interception. You know, there weren't a ton of other throws out there
05:23where I said, Oh, it looks like a guy hasn't thrown a football in a while. He came out smoking.
05:27I thought, you know, the first drive, getting them down there into, um, into the red zone again,
05:31couldn't punch it in, in the red zone, but then eventually they were able to punch it in,
05:35in the red zone later on in the game. I love the, you know, Nick Caley had some good play calls in
05:39this game. The end around with Nico down there near the goal line was, was a really good one.
05:44Uh, so much like Davis did over the course of the three games where it looked like they figured
05:49some things out down there in the red zone, especially the deep red zone. It seemed like in
05:53this game, not so great early, but then the two drives they had late, they were able to punch it.
05:57Well, I tell you what I like it less about necessarily the details of the game and more
06:01about kind of the approach, you know, I mean the last, the last month of football, we've seen
06:04Woody marks with, by the way, I hope his foot is okay, but we've seen him, you know, being be in
06:09the game. I believe I saw the graphic today on the, on the broadcast, 70 plus percent of the snaps
06:15the last three or four games. That's big. You mentioned Nico Collins had six targets in the first
06:20half and then you use him kind of in a creative way to get a touchdown down there on a, on a run.
06:24We saw, we saw some wildcat type stuff early on. Um, so, you know, you, you look at, it looks like
06:30they found their best offensive line. Um, you know, that, that a group where they started the
06:35same five offensive linemen for the first time this year, I think two games in a row. And so
06:38it looks like they found their offensive line. So it's a little easier as a fan or covering the team,
06:44the way we do. It's a little easier to, to analyze or, or to, um, to, to, I guess, accept some of the
06:51failures and some of the struggles when it looks like, Hey man, we're pulling out all the stops.
06:55We got a plan and it's just not now. Now it's easy to hear, well, you know, we, maybe you're just
06:59not executing just right. It seems like they're pulling out the stops. It seems like there's some
07:03creativity there. It seems like there's a plan. I know late in the game, the, the, the, uh, uh,
07:10Cade Stover with quarterback sneak thing and the tush push with Cade Stover. I know it didn't work
07:14late, but that, I liked that plan. It worked earlier in the game too, on two different occasions.
07:18So it's a little easier to talk about the shortcomings right now. Cause it appears like
07:23the boy thing they're starting to get their hands around some of the, some of the more football,
07:28football, simple things. Yeah. Make no mistake. Cause we're already getting texts. Guys, please.
07:32Kaylee failed to be creative again. He ran the tush push twice in a row with the defense expecting it.
07:37The tush push is a play where the defense basically knows it's coming. You're just hoping
07:41that, you know, your ends can out push his ends. You know what I mean? Like that's, that's what it
07:46is. And they had done that a couple of times earlier in the game. I'm with you. I still think
07:49there's an element to this team at times where they feel like they're a little bit more smash
07:53mouth than they actually are. And if they had lost the game, if Indianapolis driven down,
07:57scored a touchdown to win the game, we'd be talking about that sequence where they were in
08:00the tush push twice. We'd be talking about nine penalties and things like that. But even, even if you don't
08:05like it there, the method to the madness is it was very successful early, early in game. You've
08:10done it twice. It worked. There's no reason to think that, that, that first time you call it,
08:14you shouldn't get it. Now, if you wanted Nick Kaylee to line up and, and hand the ball off four
08:18yards deep on fourth and one, or you wanted to, I would have preferred him to kick the field goal,
08:22go up seven with our defense. And now you're in a game where worst case scenario, you're going to
08:26overtime. So you, we can be critical about that particular fourth down call, the play call itself,
08:31the decision to go for it versus kick the field. We can do all that. We won't, but the tush push
08:35itself, I can see, I don't like the results, but I can see where the coach would go. Hey man,
08:40I'm pot committed to this damn thing. It's worked twice. We like Cade Stover. We like the two fullbacks
08:44in the game. Clearly we feel like we can get pushed. I thought our offensive line, Sean, I thought
08:49our offensive line got relative to just getting pushed. If we're just talking about getting pushed
08:53and not getting critical of that individual place. I thought there were multiple times where we got really
08:56good push on double teams inside. And so, yeah, I don't, I don't have a problem with being pot
09:01committed to that particular play. And I love the fact that you got a plan. It worked. They stuck
09:06with it and you know, it, it, it could have been them there late, but, but the defense bailed them
09:10out. Yeah. And I thought the, the defense bailed them out and I thought the, the, uh, the defense,
09:15um, in the first half outstanding, no third downs allowed in the first half. Um, you know,
09:20they stopped a fourth down, down there deep in their own territory when they try to tight end tush push of
09:26their own and the ball with Tyler Warren and the ball scored it out and the Texans are able to
09:29get the ball back. Now CJ threw an interception literally on the very next play. So that was
09:34kind of negated by a mistake that the offense made there. Um, but the defense gets it done for
09:39you. And that, that's the question you begin to ask with this team now that they've won four in a
09:43row. They've got five games left. It's a very manageable schedule the rest of the way. Even if you view
09:49the chiefs as something better than what they actually are record wise right now, even if you think
09:54somewhere in there, the old chiefs still exists because all season long, they've been getting
09:58the benefit of the doubt from odds makers. And, and, and I think experts have expected at some
10:03point, the chiefs are just going to go rattle off seven wins in a row and make the post season
10:07time's running out. They're six and six and they just lost to the Cowboys. And now the Texans are
10:11coming to town, the hottest team in football. But even if we, even if we take that chiefs game and view
10:16it as a game where the degree of difficulty is what it's been for the last seven years playing the
10:21chiefs, the rest of the schedule. Yeah. I mean, you're coming back after that chiefs game to the
10:25Cardinals and the Raiders at home. You should win both of those games. Then you're going to the
10:29chargers who I, I don't know what the chargers are going to look like three weeks from now. Their
10:33offensive line is such a mess. And then you've got the team you beat today. You get them back at your
10:38place in week 18, assuming that game means some means something to, to both teams. So it's a very
10:44manageable schedule the rest of the way. And the even bigger picture is this, and this is why, man,
10:49just get into the post season. If you win the division, great, but just get in because the
10:53four teams as of right now, leading their divisions, none of them are the favorites that, that were
10:59favored at the beginning of the year to win that division. Right now, the leaders in the
11:03divisions are Drake may in the Patriots. Drake may has never played a playoff game before.
11:06Uh, Aaron Rogers and the Steelers, Aaron Rogers is 41 years old. Uh, Trevor Lawrence and the
11:12Jags don't get me started. And then the Denver Broncos with Bo Nix, who you probably would
11:18have beaten here at home. If CJ Stroud hadn't gotten concussed earlier in that game, I say
11:23all that to say, and I think it's really, it's a theme with the NFL at large, but especially
11:28in the AFC where the consensus for best quarterbacks in the sport, you couldn't find a power ranking
11:33before the season that didn't have some combination or permutation of these four guys as the best
11:38in the sport, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Patrick Mahomes. Three of them
11:44are out of the playoffs now. And one of them, if he loses to the Steelers today, because
11:47the Texans beat the Colts, Texans have the tiebreaker over the bills. If they're both
11:51seven and five, we could, by the time this post game is over, we could be sitting in a
11:56world where in December, Josh Allen, Pat Mahomes, Joe Burrow, and Lamar Jackson are
12:02not making the post season. That's incredible.
12:05And if that is the case, correct me if I'm wrong, if that does happen by the time we in
12:09this post game show today, that would mean the Texans would be in if the season
12:12maybe the seventh seed. Yeah. So, so yeah, I mean that that's you're right. This is a
12:15unique year where if you get in, um, it, the, the road to the Superbowl doesn't necessarily
12:21go through Buffalo, Baltimore, Kansas city, some really tough outdoor places to play,
12:26not to mention that they have great quarterbacks. So it could be a lesser road to, uh, the
12:31promised land, if you will, if you can get in this year. So yeah, look, I'm, I'm with
12:35you, man. It's, it's crazy to think that we're here, uh, but we are. And, and, uh, the
12:40Texans have dug themselves out of a hole and, and, and I think they're, you know, not
12:43only have they dug themselves out of a hole and, but you got to look at the Texans with
12:47this defense right now, you got to look at the Texans as that, that hot up and coming
12:52team that nobody wants to play. Yep. You know what I mean? They've won four in a row.
12:56The momentum's on their side. Um, they're it played, they play on the road really well
13:00because their defense is the tip of the spear anyway. And so that, that the road doesn't
13:04impact them as much. And you got to believe that Nick Kaley is getting more comfortable.
13:08All the things we mentioned earlier, the offensive line, finding ways to get Nico the ball and
13:12targeting six times in the first half, uh, Woody marks, all those things we talked about
13:16that, that the, the offense, just by the simple fact that the calendar's turning is getting
13:22better. Yep.
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