- 20 hours ago
The Houston Texans' tackling is broken and Clint Stoerner says it can't easily be fixed midseason. Sean Pendergast and Clint react to Houston’s 27-21 overtime defeat against the New York Giants, breaking down missed tackles, undisciplined penalties, and coaching accountability under DeMeco Ryans.
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00:00One back, actually, let's go off set with Ricard and Scadaboo, and McCarthy in the middle,
00:05fakes to give McCarthy in trouble, McCarthy is sacked, the Texans bring him down, Daniil
00:10Hunter with the honors.
00:14Yeah, it wasn't quite the sack party I was hoping for today, that was one of them, but
00:18I thought Will Anderson and Daniil Hunter going against some banged up tackles for the
00:22Giants against a young quarterback who's had his issues, I thought that might equate
00:26to playing behind the chains a little bit more for the Giants, but they did a great
00:32job staying ahead of the chains.
00:34When they were running the football, they were kind of just looking at my notes here, just
00:38constantly second and seven, second and five, second and six, the go-ahead touchdown drive
00:43to go up 21 to 14.
00:44They were in second and three, then third and one, second and six, then third and two, second
00:49and five, then third and one, then fourth and one, which they converted with Jameis, and
00:53then the one time the Texans got him in third and long, Malachi Fields makes another play
00:58down the field.
00:59I mean, everybody's worried about Malik Neighbors, and rightfully so.
01:01He had a really nice first half.
01:03Malachi Fields had 12 catches all year coming into this game, and he had four catches, and
01:07they all felt huge in this game.
01:10For those who don't know, he's a rookie out of Notre Dame.
01:12They drafted like in day three, and he was a good player in college, but he made more plays
01:16today than I remember him making last season for Notre Dame.
01:19Yeah, if you'd have told me coming into this game, Scadaboo would have had 100 and
01:24neighbors would have had 100, and we completely took Likely out of the box score, basically.
01:30I mean, I know he's in there, but shut down Likely for the most part.
01:34I'd have thought, hey, you've got a pretty good low-scoring game, and you probably had
01:37a chance to outscore him, and Fields filled in for Likely.
01:42Yes.
01:42Yeah, he was that second guy that kept moving chains all day long.
01:47And the Giants, they weren't killer on third down, but they were 5 of 13, which was better
01:52than the 3 of 12 that the Texans put up today.
01:54D'Amico cited that as the biggest problem for the team today, is that they couldn't sustain
01:59drives and stay on the field.
02:00I would submit that tackling was the huge issue again today, especially when it mattered
02:05in the second half of this football game and in overtime.
02:07I'm really just a pathetic job of tackling by this defense today, and it's been that
02:12way all season long, all season long.
02:15Well, it's bad enough to lose a game the way you lost it.
02:18It's bad enough to lose it on the defensive side of the ball, essentially, and it's tenfold
02:25more difficult to stomach when you lose it by not doing the very basic thing you have
02:33to do to play defensive football since you were knee high.
02:36I mean, you've been taught tackling since you started playing football.
02:43And for that to be the reason that what was supposed to be a historically great defense
02:48is not playing, is not able to win games, that's a tough one to stomach, man.
02:53Your mantra is swarm.
02:55Yes.
02:55Which is, that is your tackling.
02:58Yeah.
02:58That is your methodology of getting guys onto the ground is the catchphrase for your entire
03:04building here.
03:05The entire building, every department here swarms.
03:07They all do.
03:08And it's all predicated on the actual football team itself being a guy, being a team that
03:15swarms to get guys on the ground.
03:17And they're the opposite of that.
03:18There's guys getting stiff-armed at the five-yard line that don't even want any part of Cam
03:22Scadabo.
03:23Or Devin Singletary at the end of the run there.
03:25Like, what are we doing?
03:27Unbelievable.
03:28All right.
03:29A lot of you want to get in and chat about this, so let's do it.
03:32We'll hear from C.J. Stroud at the top of the five o'clock hour.
03:35His press conference is about four minutes long.
03:37We'll play that at five o'clock on the show today.
03:39So if you want to hear what the Texans quarterback had to say about today's loss to the Giants,
03:44stay tuned.
03:45To the phones we go and to Pedro on line one.
03:48Pedro, you're up on Texans postgame.
03:51Oh, hey, gentlemen.
03:52Thank you for having me.
03:53Oh, that was rough to watch.
03:55Just a couple things.
03:56And I don't want to come off too negative because I'm going to be a Texans fan regardless, even when
04:02we suck.
04:03I mean, I'll criticize them, but good God.
04:05Okay, so this is just my take.
04:08A lot of just fundamental mistakes.
04:10And I hate to say this, but at the end of the day, that's the head coach.
04:18I run a pretty big department, and what I can tell you is what you ignore, you accept.
04:25What you accept, you endorse.
04:27What you endorse becomes your culture.
04:28And right now, the culture is not swarmed.
04:32And so ultimately, the Texans have a week to kind of figure this out, but this has to be the
04:40head coach.
04:41I mean, it was just so many little things, so many opportunities to kind of shift the tide, all these
04:46just missed tackles.
04:47It's really fundamentally unsound football that you wouldn't expect from a professional athlete.
04:54But if they're doing that, then that's a coaching piece.
04:58I'm curious to hear what you guys think.
05:01Just my two cents.
05:03Again, we need a stronger offensive coordinator, someone that can balance D'Amico better, because it seems like he's very
05:10positive, which is great.
05:11He's uplifting.
05:12He's inspirational.
05:14But you've got to have some dog coaches that can balance that out so that the organization can run a
05:19little bit more effectively.
05:20In my mind, someone like, was it Eric the Enemy?
05:23I would love to see someone like that, and I'll just hang up and listen.
05:27Yeah, appreciate the phone call, Pedro.
05:29Yeah, I don't know.
05:29Swarm is basically just a poster in the building right now.
05:32Like, it's not their culture right now.
05:36If it is, they're not adhering to it at all.
05:39I think D'Amico's had a really rough season so far as a head coach.
05:42Well, look, here's the deal.
05:44One, the tackling issue is in today's world, it's hard to fix.
05:49So D'Amico really is backed into a corner where you can't go to practice tomorrow or Wednesday or Thursday.
05:58You can't forget about middle of the season and guys are banged up.
06:00You cannot go to practice and fix a tackling problem.
06:04I mean, he can talk about, well, we did last year and we worked these drills.
06:08You absolutely cannot go to practice and tackle, period, point blank.
06:12So that's the hardest thing.
06:16Physicality issues and tackling problems are the hardest thing to fix in the NFL in the season because you just
06:21flat out can't do it.
06:22What looks like the problem to you?
06:23Does it look like a physical problem or does it look like they just don't have the want to that
06:27they've had in previous years?
06:28Well, I think if you look at the defense as a whole, there is a lack of aggression.
06:33There's a bunch of guys that you would think are playing not to get hurt.
06:37I mean, Derek Stingley's lack of tackle on that last play right there where Scataboo.
06:42Where he just kind of hurls his body into his leg.
06:44I mean, that's embarrassing.
06:45I mean, if that were a 40th man on the roster and just a guy that was – if that
06:52were Reed Blankenship, they'd cut him tomorrow.
06:55I mean, that's the reality of it.
06:57Like, and when your highest paid player's doing that, then you got problems because now do you allow it?
07:03Back to what the caller was talking about.
07:04Do you allow it or do you call it out and do you make sure it never happens again?
07:08It sure seems like things are being allowed.
07:11But to answer your question overall, there's the aggression, the playing downhill from 11 guys is not there right now.
07:20And I think it has to do with scheme.
07:22I think it has to do, sure, some with injuries.
07:23I think it probably has a lot to do with what we're talking about of just letting guys get away
07:28with it.
07:28I'm sure it probably has a lot to do with starting slow because you didn't do anything in preseason.
07:33You let these guys believe that they didn't need to play in the preseason games and could just waltz in
07:37and be historically great in the regular season.
07:39I think it has a lot to do with – I mean, it has – there's a lot of things
07:44that play into it.
07:45But where I was going, Sean, you can't fix the tackling aspect of it, right?
07:51You're just – you can't do that at practice in the NFL in today's game.
07:57And so the lack of answers is the problem.
08:00But to the caller, the more frustrating part about this entire 2-5 and when this organization plays bad, right,
08:12is it always goes back to fundamentals, techniques, mechanics, and executing.
08:18Well, who's responsible for that?
08:20Coaches and players.
08:22Well, players have to execute.
08:23But, like, if – I mean, for four years now, I know in the off – now it's somehow trickled
08:29over to the defensive side of the ball.
08:30But for four years now, 3 1⁄2, whatever it is, we've had offensive line problems.
08:35And we've never heard – now they've been replaced at the end of the year – but we've never heard,
08:40like,
08:40hey, man, we're asking these guys to do some things that maybe they ain't real good at doing.
08:44Right?
08:45You know, hey, we're trying to run into an eight-man box.
08:47They've got a free hat every time we're running in there.
08:50That may be a scheme thing.
08:51Right?
08:52All we keep hearing from Nick Casario, D'Amico Rines, all the coordinators, is technique, mechanics, fundamentals, and execution.
09:01How long can you hear that from a technique, mechanics, fundamental organization before you turn a deaf ear to it?
09:12I mean, I've never covered an – I ain't covered many, but I've never covered an organization that spent more
09:16time talking about those things.
09:18But yet, after every game when you lose, those things are the reason.
09:21Yeah, 10 penalties, you know, that's part and parcel of that is, you know, there's the inability to execute it
09:29that results in averaging, you know, 1.8 yards per carry.
09:32There's also the inability to execute it that results in you being first and 20 three or four times a
09:36game also.
09:37Yeah.
09:38So, it's – yeah, it's – that's where I go back to.
09:41This has not been a – like, you look at the – D'Amico has not pushed many of the
09:44right buttons this year from not playing any of the guys in the preseason on the defensive side of the
09:49ball,
09:49which has now been cited by people as a reason why maybe they got off to a slow start defensively.
09:54I think we're beyond that now.
09:55We're seven weeks into the season now.
09:57But pushing that button, the penalties, I think, ultimately, they rest on the front lawn of the head coach.
10:03However you want to deviate out play-to-play, that's fine.
10:06Ultimately, if you're looking at the box score every week and it's double-digit penalties, that's on the head coach
10:12also.
10:13D'Amico's had his game management issues this year.
10:15You could argue he lost the Colts game for them because of clock management issues.
10:19It's been a rough year for D'Amico Ryan so far, and that's why you're 2-5 on the season.
10:22Well, it's going to be a rough game and a rough rest of the year.
10:26But here's what you're depending upon, right?
10:29I think today there were moments in that game, as you mentioned earlier, and I think Bossman mentioned earlier,
10:34was like there's – I don't know that C.J. Stroud saw everything as clearly today as he saw,
10:39especially like in overtime and in critical moments, as he's been seeing it all year long.
10:43Like that's what a win is dependent upon.
10:46Is C.J. seeing everything clearly every single snap for four quarters?
10:50You've got a chance to score 30 points and win the game.
10:52Well, look at the Jacksonville game last week.
10:54Yes.
10:54That's what that was.
10:55Yes, but if he's not, you know, if there's a half goes by, which by the way happens every Sunday
11:00to the greatest quarterbacks in the league, if there's a half of football goes by or in overtime
11:05you get a start to a drive that, hey, man, they got me.
11:08You know, they shook me a little bit.
11:10I didn't see what they were doing.
11:11Then, boom, it's a loss.
11:13This team is so fragile right now where if C.J. Stroud is not seeing things clearly –
11:18and I'm not even talking about going and making great plays.
11:20I'm talking about seeing things clearly, getting the ball out of his hands, making all the right reads.
11:23If he's off for one drive at the wrong time in a game, it's over.
11:27Yeah, like overtime.
11:29Yes.
11:29Right?
11:30Like overtime.
11:31I mean, damn near throw a pick in overtime to Kayvon Thibodeau because he didn't see him
11:34in that – drop in that zone blitz.
11:38I mean, he was lined up on the end of the line of scrimmage blitzing, and after he snapped
11:41the ball, bailed 15 yards deep and just happened to be standing in the window that C.J.
11:44was trying to hit.
11:45In the secondary.
11:46Yes, in the secondary.
11:47Like, that's Kayvon Thibodeau.
11:48I mean, if you're a quarterback, you're like, what the hell happened there?
11:50I didn't even see that guy.
11:51That's all number five.
11:51I'm like, that's a big safety right there.
11:53But you can't – like, this team right now can't overcome the quarterback making any
11:57mistakes at all.
11:57No, no.
11:58C.J.'s margin for error is damn near zero.
12:00Yeah.
12:01Yeah.
12:02All right, 713-572-4610.
12:04If you're on hold, stay there.
12:05We're going to get to all you guys.
12:06Obviously, a ton to dig into from this game today.
12:08And where do the Texans go from here?
12:10They're going to go into a bye week feeling pretty terrible about themselves, I would
12:14imagine, after losing today 27-21 to the Giants at home in overtime.
12:20More of your phone calls.
12:21We'll hear from C.J. Stroud as well, C.J.'s press conference.
12:23We'll do that coming up next as we roll on here live from the Hyundai Texans studio
12:27presented by Reliant.
12:29It's Texans postgame on Texans Radio.