The first of the double-digit weeks of this NFL season has officially come and gone and what a week of action it was.
Status quo was maintained with teams like the Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets in negative ways, but the positive side of the spectrum was up to par as well with the Kansas City Chiefs and Detroit Lions maintaining their respective leads.
A whole heck of a lot happened in between though, and that is the part of the sandwich that we, Michael Peterson and RJ Ochoa, specialize in.
Welcome to The Skinny Post, where we may or may not offer our opinions on our favorite sandwiches as well as the current state of the NFL.
Let me be perfectly clear. The Houston Texans are going to win the AFC South. We can all understand that they are undeniably the best team in a group of total misfits.
But the Texans may be the most paper tiger-y team going right now as they just lost to two of the teams that we listed above, and one of them was the Jets!
Houston’s latest blunder came on Sunday night with the world watching as they let the Lions come all the way back against them. All told, Detroit scored 19 unanswered points and anywhere you look among Texans fans the blame is falling squarely at the feet of where they have laid it all season… offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik.
I’m not saying that Slowik hasn’t been bad or that he doesn’t deserve to be blamed, but we (rightfully) talked so highly about C.J. Stroud all of last year and into this one. Is the quarterback not to blame for zero second-half points?
And what about the head coach? I recognize that DeMeco Ryans is a fun story and an objectively good coach, but he has also been objectively really bad and poorly prepared in the second halves of games this year. It can’t just be “Slowik sucks” and that’s the end of it.
The Texans aren’t a national name and only enter the conversation when things are going well, but we can treat them with as much logic as we do everyone else.
Michael:
Let’s get this out there right away: In a game where the offense scored 23 points in the first half, it is never solely the coordinator’s fault for the loss. That’s a little over three touchdowns worth of points and is also more than 17 teams average on a per-game basis. It’s very easy to say, “Oh, well, if the offense scores even just one more touchdown/field goal/etc then they probably would have won!”
The thing is, that’s excusing the defense for allowing 19 points in the second half which, if I recall correctly, is the side of the ball that DeMeco Ryans is responsible for.
Still, five interceptions is a lot of takeaways and one would think that would lead to an insurmountable amount of points for Houston. The thing is, CJ Stroud sure did toss multiple interceptions of his own with at least one coming immediately after the second-half kickoff and another coming soon after his team recorded one of their five. Not only were his picks tough to see, they came at times where it obliterated the momentum created by his own defense’s biggest plays.
So TL:DR, yes I absolutely agree that both Ryans and Stroud likely deserve more of the blame here than Slowick does. Ryans needs to find a way to continue making adjustments past halftime and Stroud needs to be smarter with the ball, especially given the situations he needs to capitalize on as opposed to giving the ball right back.
Little things turn into big things and I just don’t think the Texans were focused enough on the little things more than the Lions were in this one.
