Battle Red Blog
It’s another week and another surprising result in a rollercoaster season for the Houston Texans. Your Texans defeated the San Francisco 49ers 26-15, but the performance was more dominating than that on both ends of the game. The numbers will likely tell us as much, but we look anyway for the cumulative effect. The more often we look the more often we see patterns. Those patterns help tell us why the Texans are successful or not over the long haul.
The time of possession and total plays numbers tell the whole story. When you run 30 more plays than your opponent you are going to do well. When you possess twice as long as they do you are going to do well. We can go into more of that in the great, good, and bad. Unlike most weeks this year, there was no ugly. We might even struggle to come up with a bad.
The pundits and fans alike will focus more on the offense because they have been in the crosshairs for much of the season. That is completely understandable. Following play today, the Texans have given up only 103 points this season. My crack math skills tell me that is a shade under 15 points per game. The Rams are in second place with fourteen more points surrendered. Before anyone says anything, they are currently in their bye week. The Kansas City Chiefs are third and they have surrendered 21 more points before they play their eighth game of the season.
I cannot emphasize how huge this is. They don’t lead the NFL in sacks. They don’t lead the NFL in takeaways. They just make things miserable for opposing quarterbacks and skill position guys. They hit hard and they hit often. They hit late a few times too many for many of us, but that is a part of being aggressive. No one likes to play the Texans even when they win. One of the hallmark of DeMeco Ryan defenses in San Francisco was the paltry won-loss record of teams in the game after they played the 49ers. I haven’t done the research, but I imagine he has a similar effect as the Texans head coach.
The key in this one was their ability to force the 49ers into three and outs. They didn’t turn them over or sack them that often, but they bottled up one of the best running backs in the NFL. When you take away the other team’s best player, your chances of winning go way up. No, they didn’t completely shut down Mac Jones and the passing game because shutouts are extremely...
