Changing The Game: Unless You're The Houston Texans And "The Game" Is Nose Tackle

If you’re focusing the defense on your LBs (which are a great group) then wouldn’t you do what you could to help them succeed….like, say, oh…..shielding your newly extended MLB with a big, fat wall of NT?

And get someone like Fred Robbins who weighs right around 320? WHY?

Frank Bush and Bill Kollar’s kids each bought them tickets to Ralphie May concerts.

The rest is history.

Keeping it fresh around here.

I am with the thinking of maybe Frank Okam soured the teams opinions on “beefy” NT’s…

Is the way to go. If we were to make the playoffs he would make a big difference.

But they won’t even look at him. No chance.

I’m surprised so many thought the Texans were looking for a 330-pound nose tackle. A nose tackle is a run-down player. The Texans already have two of those starting — Okoye and Shaun Cody. Over the last 13 games, the Texans allowed an average of 299 total yards, including 86 rushing.
The Texans didn’t need a defensive tackle to stop the run. They needed a tackle to pressure the passer.

Stepping aside for a second the obvious rebuttal that Cody, according to FO, had a fluke-tastic season stuffing the run despite what I observationally would call mediocre performance….The Texans needed tackles who could do both. Because last year, flashes of Okoye aside, they got nothing from them.

A nose tackle is primarily an addition to stopping the run. Yes, John. Very good use of Wikipedia. But a nose tackle also is supposed to be powerful enough to draw double teams. Might surprise you to find this out, but it’s true: nobody is ever going to double team Shaun Cody unless it’s out of geographic convenience with the intent to act like they are helping or he’s hit rock bottom and is enjoying a successful sports fetish male-on-male pornogragphy career.

These Texans, these Texans that had a turn-around in run defense, were helped much more (in my eyes) by the fact that they started playing a safety who could stand near the line of scrimmage without looking like a deer in the headlights.

But no, go ahead, Shaun Cody isn’t a prime candidate for regression at all. Clearly he should continue to have a 100% stuff rate or whatever it was. Bernard Pollard will easily continue to be a badass despite a poor track record before this year and anecdotal evidence that our scrapheap safeties can fade quickly. No reason to even think about making a move that can bolster both our run defense and our pass defense instead of just our pass defense when we play Maurice Jones-Drew and Chris Johnson 4 times a year. You can be surprised when this doesn’t go according to plan too, as you are quite good at being surprised.

But I think we at BRB might seriously be overlooking Koob’s supreme confidence in his offensive scheme… and the rushing attack, in particular.

Now, if said running game had been even somewhat viable last year (and it certainly wasn’t), then we would have been able to control the time of possesion so much more consistently. This is a HUGE concept for us, please make no mistake. We would have sustained our leads longer; and much more easily. Our defense would have had entirely less on-field work to do. Opposing defenses would have had entirely more work to do against us (and, yes, let’s also factor in our talented passing game; with this combo on offense we should have the opposition guessing, all day long). Additionally, opposing offenses likely would have opted to pass against us even more, either in trying to keep up with us… or even better, in trying to catch up to us.

In turn, our defense also would have had more energy, and quite simply, it would have been all the more effective as a result. Same with our O-Line, which would have easily benefited by attacking defenses more with run blocks, as opposed to 50 retreating pass blocks nearly every single week.

Running the ball is at the basic core of Kubiak’s overall philosophy, and the Texans will either live or die, by that fact.

We have added some nicely effective personnel on defense, within the last calendar year. So fret not.

In summary, it seems that Kubiak believes that if we can get our running game back to its 2008 level, and perhaps better. Which would ideally let our defense put its onus more towards pass rushing… against an already pass-happy league, in general.

to 3rd downs with Mario and C. Barwin on the edge and A. Smith and Mitchell inside.. I think it’s gonna be lethal!

Hey guys, sorry for interrupting – I need your help – I’m writing a piece on the ages of offensive linemen in the NFL.

What is the most likely starting 5 along your OL for the upcoming season? For the best accuracy, I’d prefer to hear from you guys rather than trust my own opinions or an ESPN depth chart.

Thanks!

this past draft of doing whatever it took to finsih the D. I know it’s unpopular but I would have traded up at times to get the guys I would have thought would help us. I would have had no problem drafting 4 players in this draft instead of 9 and giving up a possible pick or two in next years draft – I just saw so much potential from this draft class. I LOVE what Baltimore did with thier picks. Even after the darft you have UDFA that you could go out and get a RB like Blount or other offesnive players to help provide depth. I really like Tate and I think he will end up being great on this team but I would have passed on him to get someone else on the defensive side of the ball. I think we could have ended up with one of the big name NT’s, two good/decent CB’s and a FS. I still like Nolan and want to see what he can do so maybe that 4th pick could have been for another position (WLB) but regardless I think they really missed the ball on this one. I really could see this defense becoming like the Ravens in years past and I think we are almost there. But the difference between being there and almost being there can be a 1-5 ranked defense vs a 15-18 ranked defense – and that’s a big difference.

I think the failure is a scheme based decision because I don’t think Kollar and Bush can agree on the scheme. I have a feeling this is a case of too many people with their fingers in the pie.