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The Texans are back at it in Richmond today against Jay Gruden’s boys. If you have not done it already, I highly recommend you catch up by checking out John Harris’ observations from Houston’s first joint practice yesterday with Washington. Here are a few of my favorites:
4. A few moments after seeing Strong flash against Dunbar, I saw a group of Texans WRs and Redskins DBs having a bit of a pow wow and then it turned into a mild fracas. It started as a Redskins defensive back made some comment to Strong, which caught the attention of DeAndre Hopkins and then Redskin DeAngelo Hall opened his mouth. That exacerbated the situation as the verbal tete-a-tete turned into a shoving match with Hopkins and Hall right in the middle of it. Then, I saw Big Tex Ryan Mallett himself run over and defend his teammates which was the least surprising aspect of the the whole thing. Mallett backs down from no one. There were no more dust ups, but the talking did continue throughout the workout.
19. Overall, I thought this was Benardrick McKinney’s best day. During one team drill, the first rep he was on the field, he destroyed an OL and then tackled the Redskins runner, forcing a fumble - the only one I remember on the day. He seems to be gaining confidence each day. He’s so much more confident playing the run as he flies from sideline to sideline looking to make tackles.
21. One of the great aspects of having a joint practice is being able to watch players from other teams work. That goes both ways, but during individual, I noticed Ricky Jean-Francois and Jason Hatcher just staring at J.J. Watt doing his individual work with the rest of the Texans defensive ends. I saw them looking over there and moved a little closer to see if I could hear them and I heard the name "Watt" a few times.
25. Oh, yeah, last thing, for real this time...when the Texans were announced as the team for Hard Knocks, the first thing Bill O’Brien said was that the nation would get to see what a hard working team this was. I couldn’t help but think about that after practice. The Texans had just finished a long three hour workout with the Redskins and off near the side field where we did our radio this morning, there were medicine balls, strength straps and kettlebells. As the Redskins walked off the field into the locker room, the Texans players got in a workout right there on the field before doing media and getting back on the bus to head back to the team hotel. The Redskins will more than likely get a workout at their facility later today but seeing them pack up for the day while the Texans kept working, I couldn’t help but think back to O’Brien’s thought.
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