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9-20-2021 Daily Thread

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31-21. 10 points. In the past, this would have had a familiar tone to it: Texans struggle to do much of anything, lots of A-gap runs that go nowhere, a frustrating halftime break, flashes of “life” in the 3rd quarter, hero-ball pants-on-fire Watson at QB dragging the team to a comeback in the 4th Qtr. only for some goofy yet well-deserved TexansLOL! crap to clinch defeat from the jaws of victory…followed so very closely with “We have to do better” or “I have to blah blah blah better” rinse and repeat every frackin’ week all season long. Tell me this wasn’t the reality of this team week in and week out. I dare you. Find the outlier(s), fine. But relative competency from the 1st whistle to the final whistle, in rare games when it happened, felt hollow juxtaposed with the typical brand of TexansLOL Football.

The gut punches continued through a hellscape offseason. These Texans were continuing to open the door into their own faces. No matter what they did, or didn’t do, and no matter what messages they tried to communicate or sometimes through periods of THANK YOU GOD! SILENCE! JUST SHUT UP & LET THE WEEK PASS WITHOUT YET ANOTHER TexansLOL GAFFE MACHINE MOMENT, this franchise couldn’t hit water even if they jumped out of a boat in the ocean. The constant drumbeat of skepticism, well-earned as frustratingly dispiriting as it was for Texans fans, kept going in the local media, national media, and throughout the Texans fanbase.

The new coach. The new GM. A journeyman QB (alarmingly NOT from the Patriots, yet…sigh…this is our QB1??). A million Caserio transactions punctuated heavily and hilariously with re-structures here, FAs leaving there, a generational Texans Defensive HOF’er Watt being mercifully let go, and a bazillion 1-year contracts to a conglomeration of the NFL’s misfit toys who want to play and decided Houston was a decent enough tree to wake up under on Christmas Day. That tree looked a lot like the sad Peanuts cartoon tree, but it was THEIR tree. They all said the same company line of “rah-rah! positive vibes only” types of comments you expect players to say, and that you might even loathe hearing after hearing it for the 100th time from them, and you might even contemplate drinking the Kool Aid only for your hope then returning to earth as a solid, gross-sounding thud like a pumpkin thrown out of a plane.

A woeful preseason (minus the Cowboys game, heh!) on top of it all? Yep. Houston, along with Detroit, being given (by far) the heaviest odds to be the first 0-17 team? Yep. Pro Football Focus giving the Texans less than a 1% chance at winning the Super Bowl? Duh. Then a weird thing happened. On any other opening day for the Texans, it would have seen this team bumbling their way through the same old routine. And surely doubly so with a rookie NFL HC named David Culley who let’s face it he ain’t exactly the guy everyone but Houston was after. And so for Texans fans everywhere the season kicked off in Reliant stadium. There was the gifted Jaguars opponent weighed down by a rookie QB, a rookie NFL HC, rumors of Jags players hating life in Jacksonville, but surely somehow Chad Freaking Henne (or more aptly: Whoever would be playing his role this year, of course) would enter the game in the 2nd half and so would commence the patented TexansLOL implosion…except it didn’t. Competency, sweet competency!, existed routinely from start to finish! There will be no winless season. Instead, there awaited a pissed off Browns team the next week.

Andre Roberts Jacoby’d it early on, and holy hell here we go…again. But! The motley crew Texans went down the field and answered back. Turnovers for Lovie’s defense played their part, with the Texans drawing to within almost HALF of the total turnover number from the previous season. Culley, after the 3rd & 7 play that netted 6 yards, decided to decline an offsides, taking the result of the passing play making it 4th & 1 with a midfield’ish punt that you felt was going to be a major factor in this game…except it wasn’t. It could’ve resulted in a 1st down and perhaps 3 points or even a TD for the Texans for all we know. It could’ve also resulted in a TexansLOL moment where the Browns get a pick 6 or a fumble recovery and short field had Houston gone for it and retained possession with more chances to implode as we’ve seen them do in the past. The result was Baker throwing a pick and the Texans scoring a TD a few plays later on. The decision to punt can be debated all day. The point is that it didn’t significantly impact this team’s chances at a win in Cleveland. For me, that moment was a wash.

In the 2nd half, with the Texans QB1 out due to a hamstring injury, general sloppiness by Culley’s team ensued which was totally expected with scout team QB Davis Mills taking the helm out of nowhere in this game. The thing I personally thought of was this: Had Andre Roberts not Jacoby’d it, it’s possible the Browns don’t score a TD there…so “what if” Slye is kicking a FG to tie the game instead of just trying to bring the Texans to within 7 of the Browns? It’s a moot point as Slye shanked the attempt. But the point here is this: This was not the same old Texans trying to finally find their ass with both hands in the 4th Qtr. or making scores off of an old familiar situation of garbage time the-defense-is-letting-us-burn-clock strategies by the opposing team we all know all too well by now.

Culley and the team made the Browns earn it. They rattled a Browns team at home who hung step for step with the Chiefs, in Arrowhead, the week before. This roster is not Super Bowl quality. There were obvious talent gaps between the two teams that were especially evident after Tyrod Taylor exited the game. You could feel the inevitable taking shape, but this time it was different. There was no Coutee to catch and fumble a ball 20 yards from our end zone. There was no Nick Martin at the opponent’s goal line to throw his snap away and then fail to even make the block that was right there in front of him. Despite, yes, a few sloppy situations taking place, this was still a decently competent team of coaches and players out there. This team didn’t get the memo, it seems.

I hate reading articles the day after a loss, the ones from the opposing team’s local media, as it’s just re-living their gains and our losses all over again. So when I saw a headline of a Cleveland.com’s postgame article, it made me a little tingly in a good kind of way: Browns Were Lucky Texans QB Tyrod Taylor Sat Out Second Half With a Hamstring Injury. Cleveland won the game, but this Texans team made them earn it. Culley and Kelly and Lovie and Campen and Tyrod Freaking Taylor and many other players were right there making the Dog Pound and the Browns wake up and take notice that someone was about to take a huge shit in their own front yard and laugh about it all the way home to Houston. If even marginal gains are made from week to week, the culture of this franchise can make actual strides instead of the thin veneer of looks-alright-but-it’s-not-real-wood-y’all we ultimately saw out of BoB through sour-puss “Don’t talk to me!” body language and scowling and terse replies dramatics after every infuriating loss. It seems like accountability and responsibility is finally here. Let’s just hope this team doesn’t take two steps back on Thursday vs. the Panthers.

Excerpts from the article linked above:

The defense was lucky that Taylor had to shut it down at halftime, because he had their number. He might have gotten revenge on the team that gave his starting job to Mayfield in 2018.

In the first half, Taylor looked like the dangerous quarterback he’s been trying to prove to everyone that he still is. If not for a muffed punt by receiver Andre Roberts after the Browns’ opening drive, they may have led at the half instead of being tied 14-14.

That’s how good Taylor was, and how powerless the Browns were to stop him. By the half, he completed 10 of 11 attempts for 125 yards with one TD pass and no interceptions for a 144.3 rating. He outran Myles Garrett on the second-quarter scramble to put the Texans up 14-7.

And this one, too:

“It’s on both of us,’’ Garrett said. “We’ve got to play to the best of our ability, whatever calls that he gives us. If we don’t make the play, that’s not only on him, that’s on all of us. You can put the blame on every single one that’s on the field, all 11 of us, and him as well. We’re a team and we’re in this together.”

If Taylor had been in there in the second half, the Browns might be 0-2 and wondering what hit them.

9-17-2021 Daily Thread

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Barry’s back with a Heh Report: View it here! Weekend thread posts Sat. morning as usual. Pre-Game thread posts at 9 a.m. Central Time on Sunday. 1st Qtr. thread on Sunday posts at 11:45 a.m. Central Time for a noon kickoff.