Battle Red Blog
This always takes on a different tone than the recap. The recap reflects the emotions of the moment. When you win a game 16-13 on a walk off field goal there are bound to be a number of emotions. The Value of Things is always about analyzing the data to see if we notice any trends. We also look at the great, good, and bad in wins and the good, bad, and ugly in losses.
Teams can always improve even when they are coming off a victory. That is particularly true when facing the worst team in football. When we start stacking these together we start to notice some trends. The trends say that this team has a great defense and a lousy offense. However, lousy might be overly simplistic. They are situationally awful, but we will get to that in a minute.
I often struggle to understand the Houston Texans. I am a data nerd. Everything above indicates that the Texans should have won the game comfortably. They possessed the ball longer, gained more yards, ran more plays, and made fewer errors. This seems to be a hallmark of the Ryans tenure in Houston. They win close games. They play hard. Yet, they seem to make things as difficult as humanly possible. Okay, let’s check in on the great, good, and bad.
A backup quarterback has an unenviable job. He has to come in and run the offense cold and hopefully keep the machine rolling as much as humanly possible. We can certainly assign style points if we want and other analysts will do it on their own dime, but Mills was called on to win two must win games and he did. He did while engineering two walk off drives in two weeks. We can always talk about why those drives were needed and we certainly will, but he did his job. He kept the Texans’ playoff hopes alive for another week.
Let’s be honest, he didn’t have to do much on this day. The Houston Texans have the best defense in football and the Titans are worst offense in football. He was called on to take care of the football and make smart throws. He didn’t have any turnover worthy throws in this one. Sure, he missed an occasional throw because he is a backup quarterback. We are grading on a curve here. It wasn’t an “A” worthy performance because some analysts love to throw those around. It was good enough and that is what matters.
The defense would have made it into the great column if it weren’t for that last touchdown...
