Battle Red Blog
This is usually something reserved for the day after, but Saturday football always throws a wrench into everything. The good news is that the Texans now have an extra day to recover for the season finale at home. As I write this, I still do not know whether it will be their last home game of the 2025-2026 season. Obviously, once they were 3-5 they did everything they possibly could to give themselves a chance to win the division. Of course, that is not what we come here to talk about. We are here to look at what happened this last Saturday.
Like most games this season, there were some really good things that happened, but there were also some questionable things that happened. In victory, we look at the great, good, and the bad. It is in honor of not overlooking in victory what we would harp on in defeat. Before we do that, we should take a look at the numbers from the game to see if we can find any nuggets that could help us look at future battles.
Obviously, you’d have to watch this game to get a true sense of it. You would be forgiven if you believed the Texans did a good job of protecting Stroud based on only these numbers. That’s why you have to watch the games as they say. This was a unique game in the fact that the Texans did not win the turnover battle. Otherwise, these numbers look pretty normal for a Texans victory. Let’s take a look at the great, good, and bad.
The five sacks don’t tell the whole story. There were at least two or three sacks that were taken off the board because of penalties. One came on a Denico Autry tripping penalty. Another came on a bogus illegal contact where the wide receiver initiated contact. Furthermore, the Chargers’ rushing output included a 30+ yard scamper by Justin Herbert. These types of runs seem to happen on a weekly basis whether the QB be mobile or not. I suppose it is just one of those things we should accept with the swarming defense.
This is a unit that held the Chargers to one field goal and one offensive touchdown through three quarters. The field goal was completely due to the fact that Stroud threw an interception deep in Chargers territory. The two Chargers touchdowns came with several penalties (including the tripping and illegal contact) flags that were questionable at best. There was a third sack on the second drive where the Chargers got first down and goal for...
