Battle Red Blog
It was a familiar formula for the Texans on Sunday night. They got off to an early lead and held on for dear life. The Kansas City Chiefs briefly tied it up 10-10 in the fourth quarter before the Most Interesting Defense in the NFL showed up and dominated the fourth quarter. The Chiefs went for it twice on fourth down deep in their territory and the Chiefs turned it over on downs twice. They also intercepted Patrick Mahomes three times on the evening as Mahomes and the Chiefs offense easily turned in their worst performance of the 2025 season.
The final count was 20-10 on this evening as DeMeco Ryans seemed to make good on his suggestion that if his offense could just get him to 20 points then his defense would find a way to take the game. That formula has worked most of the time this season and has worked in each of the past four weeks. Through 13 games, the Texans defense leads the NFL with the fewest points allowed and the fewest yards allowed.
It was the versatility of this defense that was so impressive. The defensive line that has grabbed most of the headlines this season garned only two sacks against a patchwork offensive line. The game was dominated on the back end as both Jalen Pitre and Kamari Lassiter added interceptions to their already impressive 2025 totals. Derek Stingley gets most of the flowers nationally and he made some big plays, but Lassiter overcame a foot injury to play perhaps his best game of the season.
It wasn’t always pretty on offense. The Texans lost two yards in the third quarter on three consecutive three and outs. If it weren’t for Andy Reid inexplicably going for it on fourth down from his own thirty, we would probably still be playing football right now. Obviously, we will get into what this means for the playoff picture and we will get to more on the positives and negatives of this game. This has to be a moment to savor another seemingly improbable victory. What did you think of the game?
