Welcome to the weekly S.N.O.T., folks!
Everyone doing good? Fantastic. I spent a Saturday in college for the first time in my life, reading about the forced migration of the Cherokee from Georgia during the 1800s and playing Badminton.
I also spent some time reviewing the offensive tape from the Thursday night win over the Bengals last week. A few things stood out to me:
- Watching Julien Davenport attempt to block is high comedy. There was an endless slew of snaps where he was asked to help double on a block and somehow managed to dither for five seconds while his supposed partner in said block got beaten.
- In a league defined by big plays, it’s good to have a player like Deshaun Watson. Just to have his ability to extend plays, to create extra time and space for receivers to get open, is invaluable. During that late fourth quarter drive, Watson had a completion to Tyler Ervin on third down that moved the chains; it was just crazy. The pocket collapsed and none of the receivers were open, yet Watson somehow managed to scramble to buy time before tossing a quick pass back across his body to Ervin for the first down.
- Unfortunately those are microcosms of good in the larger universe of terrible things that the Texans’ offense does. Be very afraid if the Patriots start running man coverage against DeAndre Hopkins and Braxton Miller tomorrow, because neither could gain much separation against the player(s) covering them. Even when they did, Watson never really looked confident throwing into tight windows. The Patriots could sit Patrick Chung and Malcolm Butler on top of Nuk the entire game, and the Texans would have precious little in the way of open space to get Hopkins the ball.
Enough of football. We’ve got all of tomorrow for that. This is your S.N.O.T. Let your hair down and tell us about your week or what’s on your mind.