Battle Red Blog
“I come to praise Caesar, not to bury him.” — William Shakespeare
No one has been more scrutinized and embattled in Houston than Nick Caley. I am a numbers guy first and foremost. Most decisions that are made emotionally are the wrong one. The whole concept behind the value of things was to hope that we as fans could understand the science behind why things are done. When teams use evidence to make decisions they often make better decisions. When they make the wrong decision it is usually either because of simple bad luck or because they need better evidence.
We could say that the offense has been disappointing overall and I suppose that is true to a certain extent. After all, they are currently 17th in points scored. In a 32 team league that is almost exactly average. I’d imagine for a team with Super Bowl aspirations, average is disappointing, but we have to remember where they were coming from, what his mandate was, and how that all fits into the overall narrative.
We should start with the mandate. Obviously, doing better is a mandate by itself, but the Texans needed to improve in some key areas. First, we wanted them to keep Stroud cleaner in the pocket. That would happen with a combination of better blocking, a quicker passing attack, and better decision making by Stroud. We can rate all of those things through statistics. We also hoped the running game would improve. We hoped they would take care of the football and we hoped that they would commit fewer pre-snap penalties as well. We can rate all of those things.
We have to remember the mandate. The team is going to play football the way that DeMeco Ryans wants to play football. I think that is the one thing all of us need to remember. We can watch the games and we can see opportunities where the Texans leave points out on the field, but at the end of the day we have to come back to the way Ryans wants to play football. When he talks about the kind of team he wants to be, are the Texans living up to that image?
This is usually the first description that Ryans uses when describing the way he wants to play football. He would probably love the team to run it 40 times a game if the situation would allow. They are averaging 27.4 rushing attempts per game. That’s two more carries per game than the 2024 squad. So, if Ryans wants an offense that runs the ball more often then he got that offense. Now, are they effective at it? They are 26th in the NFL in yards per attempt.
I think this is where most fans get caught up and why I love numbers in the first place. Numbers help quantify a feeling that we have. The offense feels ineffective because they are trying to do more of something that they...
