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Texans Tuesday - Against the Chiefs the O Plays One Half - the D Plays No Halves


The good news is that the Texans scored 5 TDs the last 8 times they had the ball against the Kansas City Chiefs. The bad news is that their offense needed to do that a couple more times to win this game thanks to their sieve defense.

The Chiefs scored 9 of the 11 times they touched the ball. The only reason the carnage was not worse than the final 42-34 score was that the Texans did "force" them to settle for 5 field goals against "only" three offensive TDs. The defense was not completely to blame for all the TDs as the special teams pulled another matador ole coverage of Tyreek Hill's 82 yard dash to the end zone on a Shane Lechler punt.

It is true that the offense took a little while to settle in, which was not helped by the fact that their defense let the Chief's offense play keep away for most of the first half and a good part of the game. The Chiefs held the ball for approximately 22 of the 30 first half minutes and 38 of the 60 for the game.

But while keeping in mind that the offense did not hit their stride until late in the first half, it is also true that the 34 points scored Saturday night would have won every single game last year except for the Pats playoff game, where it would have tied them with the Patriots output.

The offense continued to show some strong highlights just like they had the previous two games, Deshaun Watson's 5 TDs being the foremost one. His rapport with both DeAndre Hopkins (52 yds, 3TDs) and Will Fuller (52 yds, 2 TDs) continues to grow, but he hit 8 different receivers (I did not know we had 8 guys who could catch the ball) for the night.

The rushing offense, especially in the second half - mixed in nicely as both Lamar Miller (15 carries for 75 yds), and D'Onta Foreman (4 for 34) joined Watson (3 for 31) for over 6 yds per tote.

The Defense was offensive this week as in stinky. They allowed the Chiefs 450 total yards, 29 first downs and a 56% 3rd down conversion rate. They made Alex Smith look like Denton Cooley as he surgically sliced and diced them for 29 of 37 passes for 324 yds.

I know that once both Whitney Mercilus and then J.J. Watt went out with injuries for the game and then later for the season, that Defensive Coordinator Mike Vrabel looked like he had brought a celery stick to a gun fight. And yes I know he is also without Brian Cushing for another slew of games and Kevin Johnson for hopefully no more games. But he needs to sit down with the "Assistant Head Coach" and figure something out, even if it is Romeo Crennel calling the defensive plays and Vrabel holding the clip board.

The plus side is that the Texans get the closest the NFL gives to having a two week bye - the Browns followed by the bye. They can get well, get a 3rd win and get a new defensive perspective on life. At least they better....

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