- 1 day ago
Now that the dust has settled from the Texans' preseason loss to the Chargers, Seth Payne has postgame notes from his rewatch.
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00:00Texans lose last week to the Los Angeles Chargers, but as you like to do once the dust has settled.
00:06We've got our hot takes right afterwards in the post-game show, and then you and I have hot takes
00:12the next day.
00:14But sometimes the dust settles, you re-watch it, and we see some other things.
00:18Right, right, right. We'll stick to the offensive side of the ball today, and then maybe if there's, unless something
00:23big happens, we'll do some of the defense tomorrow.
00:25But I think that the first stringers, obviously, were out there for the first drive, and it works out perfectly
00:31by preseason standards.
00:32Because, you know, you want to get a series of work as long as it's a good series.
00:36The most annoying thing is when you go three and out, and then have to go out again, and then
00:40go three and out, and you're like,
00:41all right, we're getting into the second quarter here with our starters.
00:45First of all, to lay it out, Aaron Wilson asked Cole Popovich about, was it good to see the starting
00:51offensive line out there?
00:52And Cole Popovich said, hey, pump the brakes on that.
00:55Your overall take on the work of the guys, which was first team against the guys the other night, the
01:02first team?
01:04Yeah, it was good to get all those guys out there together and repping.
01:06I don't know if that's, like, necessarily, like, the first team.
01:10You know, it was the team that we put out there first within that preseason game.
01:14I thought they did a nice job communicating.
01:16They threw a lot of pressures at us.
01:18You know, if you watched that game back, it seemed like they were damn near 70% pressure.
01:22And so that was great for us, just to see all that throughout the whole game.
01:26And I thought everybody really handled it really well.
01:28Yeah, okay, it did annoy me that the Chargers were blitzing as much as they were.
01:32I don't mind it when the starters do it.
01:34Because, okay, hey, you've got veterans out there.
01:36You should be able to handle this.
01:37Even though it was mostly, it was a veteran offensive line.
01:41Marlon Klein's out there as a rookie.
01:43Noah Whittington's out there as a rookie.
01:44First time in an NFL field.
01:46And you like to see guys just win their physical battles.
01:48And the Chargers are, the Chargers are blitzing all over the place.
01:52Damn Harbaugh.
01:53Well, the new offensive coordinator, or the new defensive coordinator, who's been there before.
01:58You know, they're running a lot of the way the Chargers did already.
02:00I'm wondering if on that first end around, the Texans ran on the first play of scrimmage,
02:05if he was like, oh, that's how it's going to be.
02:07Oh, this is how we're going to do it?
02:08That's funny.
02:09Here we go.
02:09Chris O'Leary is his name.
02:11Chris O'Leary, that's right.
02:11Yeah, yeah.
02:14But by and large, the starters did well.
02:16And the thing that I was pleased about was when I went back, even some of the plays where you
02:19might wonder,
02:20oh boy, what'd the offensive line do there?
02:22The bootleg where Mills threw to Marlon Klein and it ended up being defensive pass interference.
02:30Remember, there was pressure in his face immediately.
02:33And people's knee-jerk reaction is to think the offensive line must have screwed up there.
02:37That wasn't Braden Smith's fault at all on that play.
02:41If anything, it was a really, really bad play fake.
02:44And I don't know if it was Whittington or Davis Mills' fault or the play design,
02:48but it was a horrible play fake.
02:49Like, so the defensive end just didn't bite on it.
02:54Yeah, they weren't buying it at all.
02:55It didn't slow him down at all.
02:56So he was in Davis Mills' face immediately.
02:59People had pointed out that Xavier Hutchinson was wide open on that.
03:04Yeah.
03:05There's no way in hell Mills would have known it.
03:07Like, Mills did the right thing on that.
03:08He ended up taking, A, if there hadn't been pass interference, it might have been a touchdown.
03:13Right.
03:13So it was a pretty damn nice throw by Mills with somebody in his face immediately.
03:18And B, he had zero time to get back off his primary read on that one.
03:23I'm glad you said that because I thought, I mean, I was sitting next to you in the press box.
03:26On that play, I'm like, man, Hutchinson is, you watch the play develop.
03:29You're like, he's right there.
03:30He's right there.
03:31And he throws it.
03:31It all worked out.
03:32Yeah, you think on a bootleg, the quarterback turns around and this defensive end is in his face immediately.
03:37There was no time to scan through his progression.
03:41What else you got?
03:43I did think that they handled the blitz reasonably well.
03:46They had one little glitch on one of them.
03:48But for kind of getting ambushed by a bunch of blitzes in the first half, when a lot of the
03:52guys who might be starters are out there,
03:54I thought they did an okay job on the offensive line.
03:57I think some of the ones were like, okay, Lewis Bond didn't pick up that blitzing defensive back well enough,
04:03and that led it to a sack on one play.
04:07Marlon Klein has a lot of promise as a blocker.
04:11There were a couple moments where there was one, he was in a bad situation because of him and Ursary
04:20not being on the same page.
04:21I don't know whose fault it was, his or Ursary.
04:23But he made the best of it.
04:25The defensive end kind of had him locked out, and Klein just kept driving and pushing and created a crease
04:30for the running back.
04:31So I'm really encouraged by him because it's not just obviously the pass catching with him.
04:35It's going to have to be the blocking side of things.
04:38You can see what they saw in him.
04:39Yeah, yeah.
04:40I think, and if it's only going to get better, I think he's really, he's got a lot of potential.
04:45Yeah, yeah.
04:46Of the running backs, I think, I don't think it's a surprise to anybody that after I rewatched, I think
04:51that Whittington is the leader in the clubhouse there with the young running backs.
04:57Did you see Pitsenberger went on IR this weekend?
05:00Yeah.
05:00The kid from Yale.
05:01So yeah, he's done.
05:03And Owen Wright, I mean, Owen Wright had been on the team for like three days.
05:06I actually thought he did a pretty good job in blitz pickup from a mental standpoint, but he also just
05:13got, he got walked back.
05:15He had the right assignment.
05:16He got walked back.
05:17I'm going to give him a bunch of breaks because A, he's just a young guy on a new team.
05:21I think just him stepping up to the mental side of it was impressive to me.
05:26That might be the thing I'm most excited for on Thursday night is getting our first look at David Montgomery
05:30in a Texans uniform.
05:33So those are some of the good things.
05:35And when they got into the second offensive line, it was Sam Hagen at right tackle, then Weewoo, and then
05:42Evan Brown at center, Jarrett Patterson at left guard, and Fisher at left tackle.
05:48Okay.
05:49I'm having a really tired time with Braden Smith and Blake Fisher.
05:52I keep saying Braden Fisher.
05:54You've combined them a few times.
05:55A bunch of times.
05:56Yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:57Yeah.
05:57That's okay.
05:57I don't know when that's going to end.
05:59So I have to, I'm going to say they're complete names.
06:02I think that Evan Brown, I think of Evan, I liked what Evan Brown did at center more than I
06:08liked what he did at guard.
06:09Hey, by the way, you know why you're probably doing that too?
06:11Why?
06:11Because there's an Aiden Fisher on the team.
06:14Oh, yeah.
06:14On the Texans.
06:15Now we really, yeah.
06:16Yeah.
06:16It rhymes.
06:18The Kamari Ramsey thing is messing me up too because there's so many damn Jalens and Jadens on this team.
06:23That's all you need.
06:24And Jalen Ramsey is a very famous cornerback.
06:26You needed another Kamari on a team like you needed a hole in the head.
06:31This is Nick trying to mess with me.
06:33Sorry.
06:34Evan Brown you were talking about.
06:36So Evan Brown, Evan Brown came in at center after, after Rutledge was out.
06:41And then he went to guard later on.
06:43And I just, in a very small sample size, I liked it.
06:46Evan Brown just looks more natural as a center.
06:50And just, I think in general, but then also just based on this, this game.
06:54And I think he's, I think he's ahead of Jake Andrews right now in terms of who the starting center
06:59might be if Rutledge goes to guard.
07:01Isn't that wild that the incumbent center from last year might not make the team this year?
07:04Yeah.
07:05I mean, he's in, he, Jake Andrews is in some serious danger.
07:08It's not that wild if you think about the performance of the offensive line.
07:11No, no, I'm saying like in general, like on an NFL team, it was 12 and five last year.
07:17Yeah.
07:17That the guy who started pretty much every game at center is just not going to make the team the
07:21next year.
07:21You know why it's not wild to me?
07:22Because the wilder thing is that they had an ongoing competition between two guys that left guard last year.
07:27That's true.
07:28And neither of them ended up being relevant.
07:30Fair point.
07:30The wild thing might be that Jake Andrews was a starting center in the NFL in the first place.
07:34Yeah, that doesn't, that doesn't feel as wild to me.
07:37Yeah.
07:37Um, the, uh, so there was one play I sent you where I think Blake Fisher has done a lot
07:45of good things.
07:45There was one play where he, he got, he got knocked back a little bit.
07:50Ass over T-kettle, man.
07:51On a split zone play.
07:52Yeah.
07:52And he took out a tight end.
07:54I think it was Foster Moreau who was coming across the formation.
07:58Well, actually, I think, uh, I think Fisher got the worst of it.
08:01Fisher kind of, Fisher took a bump.
08:03He kind of winded, like did a turnstile windmill, like he was, uh, like a, like he got a hard
08:08moving screen.
08:09Oh no.
08:09Like he sold it.
08:10If it was WWE, like, man, look at himself.
08:12So this is the, my overall, the second team came in and I was like, all right, these guys
08:17are doing something nice.
08:19They're moving down the field.
08:20We had a successful screen.
08:21Yeah.
08:22Something we haven't seen a whole lot of in the last couple of years.
08:24Right.
08:24Right.
08:25But then, ah, ah, they got down to the red zone.
08:27And that's where, okay, just, this feels like last year they were doing, they were moving
08:31the ball pretty well through the, through the middle of the field.
08:35They got into the red zone and it wasn't awful, but it certainly wasn't great until, until
08:40the QB, a failed QB sneak is just, you can't have this.
08:43You can't have a failed QB sneak.
08:45Yes.
08:45No, you cannot.
08:46It's one of the most successful plays in the history of football is the QB sneak.
08:50I put part of it on Mertz a little bit, RIP Mertz.
08:53But, uh, I think that, I think, uh, a more veteran quarterback could have found the soft
08:58spot in where it was.
08:59I thought the, I thought the O-line by and large, the second stringers got pretty good
09:03movement on a lot of the double teams.
09:05I thought Wee Woo did some good things.
09:07Sam Hagen, I thought did some good things.
09:09And he's, uh, he's the guy from the great, uh, the great plains, the, uh, South Dakota.
09:15Yeah.
09:15Yeah.
09:16Um, so he was, he got a lot of reps at both right tackle and left tackle in that game.
09:20And he's just like, he's very much a rookie and a work in progress, but I think they see
09:24something in him.
09:25Yeah, no, for sure.
09:26For sure.
09:27All right.
09:27So tomorrow is the defensive rewatch.
09:29Okay, good.
09:30I got to spend more time with the linebackers.
09:32I spent, I spent four hours yesterday going back and forth with, uh, Drew Hodgen and Sage
09:37Rosenfels on that one failed bootleg that we were talking about.
09:41Yep.
09:41Oh, there was also, uh, one thing that I liked about Whittington, there was a, when they were
09:45down in the red zone, he had that one run to the left.
09:48It was, it went for like three yards, I credit him for turning it into three yards, but there
09:52was another one where initially I thought, what the hell offensive line, get this right.
09:57Um, that actually, uh, that, that play was actually pretty well blocked, but the young
10:05defensive end didn't, didn't play the boot at all and just came screaming down.
10:12And where Whittington could have made the extreme cutback across the grain, if the defensive
10:18end had played the bootleg, honestly, um, they didn't hold them there.
10:21But then the Texans credit to Nick Cayley, seeing that, that that's the way the defensive
10:25end was, was playing the boot.
10:27They ran a successful boot action a few plays later on and the defensive end got sucked
10:32inside.
10:32They didn't, the play didn't go anywhere.
10:34That was the play where Mills ended up running out of bounds, but like, it was good from
10:37a play calling perspective that, all right, they set this up and they knew they had it
10:43because they saw the way the defensive end was playing the boot.
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