Incompletions: Texans v. Browns (Asinine Punks)

MATT WESTON:

Since I’ve been back home, I’ve planned my days during the NFL season around the Houston Texans. Things put aside. Days rearranged. All to ensure I was there, sitting, watching our favorite football team play football.

These last two weeks have been different. I’ve been driving around Texas, holding hands, kissing fingers, taking hot showers, walking through oranges, reds, and yellows, staring out a backseat window as the hill country turns into desert, feeling and experiencing things I thought to be true and bookmarking how beautiful, joyous, and precious every second of every day is.

While I’ve been doing this, this other aspect of my personality and your personality, being a fan of the Houston Texans football team, has been the exact opposite of this. There was nothing joyous about taking down Jake Luton and the Jaguars thanks to a missed two-point conversion attempt. From the looks of it, there was nothing joyous about yesterday either. Ownership is thinking about bringing Romeo Crennel back for another year so they can continue to operate under a structure that’s different and most importantly, doesn’t work. Houston somehow scored only three points against a mediocre Cleveland defense despite having a quarterback who the numbers say is playing at a top five level. Nick Chubb ran out of bounds at the one yard line. Justin Reid called Rivers McCown an asinine punk. There were a lot of jokes about pigeons; none of them made any sense and struck my ignorant heart. DeAndre Hopkins took down OUR Josh Allen with a Hail Mary touchdown reception over three defenders. The best receiver in the league, the same player Houston exchanged for a second round pick and David Johnson; that second round pick became a pick swap that led to Brandin Cooks and Ross Blacklock. If you thought that trade would make Houston better, you have turds between your ears.

I haven’t watched the Texans-Browns game yet. I’m going to do it this afternoon. As of right now, I like the idea of not watching it. I want to live in this afterglow of this last weekend a little longer and continue sitting wrapped in our hilarious pink elephant blanket a little bit longer. I don’t want to see Nick Chubb outside zone running, Watson’s depression, Cooks failing to win at the catch point, Justin Reid’s missed tackle, Baker Mayfield’s exuberance over doing absolutely nothing, Hopkins’ catch, or Josh Allen’s broken heart. I don’t want to see any of this.

Eventually I’ll acquiesce, I guess. I’ll find out why and how and what happened while I was gone. I’ll watch the other condensed games. I’ll write “Ten Things.” I’ll be here next Sunday for the Patriots. I’ll be there drunk on Thanksgiving next Thursday when the Texans play the Lions in Detroit. I’ll pray they take down the Colts, that sickening bland above ground swimming pool filled with mayonnaise of a franchise, at least once this year. I love every Texans-Titans game. Because even if the Texans are bad and dumb, at the end of the day, I just love the game. Even if I love it a little less than I love everything else that’s happening right now.

ABSOLUTELY EMBARRASSING:

RIVERS MCCOWN:

NO.

CLEAN SWEEP:

BIGFATDRUNK:

It’s still shocking every week to see just how much damage people like Bill O’Brien, Jamey Rootes, and Cal McNair have done to the Texans. The team is an embarrassment from top to bottom.

As far as the game? Losing in this ignominious fashion was true Texans perfection.

BURN THE TEAM DOWN.

DUNKED ON:

MIKE BULLOCK:

When Deshaun Watson and J.J. Watt can’t beat the Cleveland Browns, and the rumors come out that ownership wants to keep anyone involved in making the team that bad in the same day, you know it’s going to be a long, long time before the Texans are contenders again.. If ever.

TIM KELLY’S SUPER VERTICAL, SUPER COOL, JUST KILL ME OFFENSE:

L4BLITZER:

The final score reads 10-7. The Browns are 6-3 and the Texans are 2-7. Yet I am not so sure anyone can come away feeling any sort of good from this game. For Cleveland, this was a game that they should not have let be this close. They did not leverage the run as much as they should have until late in the game. Why they let Mayfield throw a pass in the fourth quarter, especially the incompletion that forced Cleveland to punt and give the ball back to the Texans for the false hope touchdown, I will never know.

For the Texans, this was a game that they probably could have won. They left at least 13 points on the field (the failed 4th down conversion, the perfectly executed fake FG punt [ironically, the best executed play for the Texans the entire game] that cost them a chance to try a field goal, and the shanked 46-yard field goal). They also had their best defensive scoring effort of the year, holding Cleveland to 10 points. But the offense had its worst output of 7 total points. The team so poorly managed its timeouts that you wondered if BO’B was still back on the sideline.

This game just reflected the overall situation for the franchise. A game played in poor weather, after a week when the team made one of the most head-scratching moves in recent NFL front office memory...yeah, this just encompasses the state of the Texans beautifully. Perhaps the only people currently happy with the state of Texans affairs are the Miami Dolphins, who are not only legitimately in the hunt for a playoff berth but also primed to cash in on the misery in Houston. I guess the Texans might still win another game or two, but I am not hopeful.

The most entertaining aspect of the remaining season, and the most important, will be the front office activity. What will the team do in its GM hunt? What will that yield for the head coach? Maybe the organization goes in a completely different direction. The vibe of competency does not exist right now. Maybe the loss in Cleveland yesterday was more than just a loss. Maybe it was the passing of the crown of franchise incompetency to the Texans. Maybe that is an overreaction, but the Texans aren’t doing anything to dispel that notion.

DIEHARD CHRIS:

That garbage effort deserves a garbage effort in return. So here is my entry:

That game was garbage to watch, it’s garbage to analyze, and it’s garbage to react to. Couple it with a late game, game-winning catch by DeAndre Hopkins (one of the greatest he’s made in a career filled with of GREAT catches), and it’s more like garbage that I’m being forced to eat and process while naked on live television.

[KITTEN] Bill O’Brien.

[KITTEN] Jack Easterby .

[KITTEN] Kitten Cal McNair for allowing them to rip this team apart when he was the only one who could stop it.

LOVE, NOT HATE! WELL, I GUESS WE CAN MAKE AN EXCEPTION THIS TIME: