20min chapter

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal cover image

Texans-Jets TNF Recap with Seth Payne

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

CHAPTER

Rivalry Showdown: Texans vs. Cowboys

This chapter focuses on the high-stakes primetime matchup between the Texans and Cowboys, emphasizing the intensity of their rivalry. The conversation highlights the performance challenges faced by Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud and the struggles of the offensive line under pressure. Additionally, personal anecdotes and humorous reflections bring light to the frustrations and hopes surrounding the team's future, particularly through the lens of young fans.

00:00
Speaker 1
You do have another primetime game, though, right after that, which is against the
Speaker 2
Cowboys, which, you know, as you know, I don't need to tell you, but for a list, I mean, that's a big time rivalry game. That's shaping up as a big game because, yes, the Texans could be licking their wounds there at 6-4, and they haven't been as good as their record all year. And the thing about tonight's performance that makes me most worried is what's made me most frustrated and worried about all the season. It's the slow, shook factor of C.J. Stroud. That's just, it's going, it's happening every week. I believe in C.J. Stroud so much. I said like three or four weeks ago, if I could just have one quarterback moving forward, including age and contract and everything, it's like, I mean, yeah, of course Patrick Mahomes like, yeah, I mean, I guess so. Yeah.
Speaker 1
But, but
Speaker 2
considering age, Greg, no, I'm just saying considering age, like like, Stroud is so young. Like, actually, I just love Stroud. And I thought he played so well despite what was happening around him for five, six weeks this season. But the constant pressure, I think, is starting to get to him. He was sacked eight times in this game. The pressure rate was 45 to 50%. But the times where he was protected in this game, look, he doesn't have his main receivers out there. He did look a little panicky in a way that I've never seen out of Stroud. That makes me believe what you would expect to happen. Eventually, all this pressure, the accumulation, I think is maybe starting to get to him. And that really makes me mad at your offensive coordinator.
Speaker 1
Bobby Sloak's getting a lot of heat in Houston, like increasingly so. And I don't, I don't anticipate my, my show starts at 6am central time. I don't, I might not, I just, I might not. I'm going to do like a five-hour youtube stream so uh we should do the seth pain youtube it's awesome it's legendary so it
Speaker 2
is really great everyone check out seth on youtube and hell listen to the radio show to just stream it even yeah oh no if
Speaker 1
you like if you're into misery yeah yeah go ahead and uh just misery listen to it in the morning because it's going to be miserable uh Yeah, it's a concern. Look, I played with David Carr. And I was talking to one of my old teammates, Gary Walker, about this the other day when we were at Andre Johnson's ring presentation last week's game. But like David Carr, you know, no big deal. David Carr, just a bunch of legends hanging around. Andre, me, just legends, same status. So, but we're talking about David Carr. And David Carr, you'd watch him in practice. And David Carr, back in 2002, 2003, he'd make some incredible throws in practice. But he wasn't playing behind a good offensive line. I think the clock in his head got permanently destroyed. And you just worry about these guys when they're in their formative years, if they're constantly under pressure. And when you're talking about CJ being cool under pressure, that early in the game, remember, he ducked away from Hasan Redick, kind of shook Hasan Redick off. And you could see from the close-up, his eyes never dropped. He had his eyes eyes downfield the entire time so it's not like he's gun shy but things in a lot of this I hate to make it as simple as well man things will be different when if if Nico Collins comes back next week from his hamstring injury but Nico does make a huge difference in not just the deep threat, but the stuff over the middle. You know, you can you can just you can connect on a slant over the middle to Nico and he breaks three tackles and it's 20, 30 yards pretty consistently. And he just doesn't have anybody. There's no there are no big receivers right now in the receiving core. You know, and even once Nico went down, you had Tank and you had Stefan Diggs, but smaller guys. But yeah, which I think CJ could still manage pretty well with, but he just, he cannot trust the pass protection. And we've probably talked about the left guard more in the last few weeks than we have in over a decade. And we were wondering like, yeah, nobody wants to hear about it. I was actually thinking about you. I told you because your son's a Texans fan now. And I was like, hey, I don't know how much people are talking about this before the game, but left guard is actually kind of a big deal. Lo and behold, there you go. I apologize
Speaker 2
to your son. Yeah, I would say you ruined his Halloween, but he's a nine year old. Halloween is Christmas. It's a close second to Christmas. A Texans loss did not ruin him. In fact, as they were as the Aaron Rodgers was throwing that touchdown pass to Devante Adams, he had just gotten back from trick or treating and he's out on the porch passing out the candy to the kids that are still coming by and having the time of his life. He's not going to be brought down on Halloween. We're walking on the way to school this morning and he said, this is the best time of year. Well, Christmas number one, Halloween, my birthday is second. So, you know, a nine-year is not going to get it ruined, but he would be. And I hate to think of the Texans fans who, I'm not going to say they were happy about an injury, but you did lose your left guard tonight. Right. Right.
Speaker 1
I had, yeah, I had quite a few. I had actual DMS from people kind of like expressing how guilty they felt over that situation. Um, uh, about Kenyon
Speaker 2
green too. Who is there? I get confused cause
Speaker 1
there's multiple greens. There's K there's two K greens that play left guard. There's kenyon green and kendrick green kendrick is the scrappy little dude that came in and played left guard he was a center in pittsburgh and he like he got demoted to fullback the next year his second year in pittsburgh and like they'd given up on him as an offensive lineman he came to houston and actually played guard last year before he got injured and i thought was way more impressive than i expected him to be so this year this week we're wondering all right kenyon green got benched in the game last week uh jared patterson the notre dame kid came in for him and played pretty well for one series then he got injured and we're expecting kendrick green to come in but they put kenyon green back out there and then they rolled about okay this is this is for
Speaker 2
your five-hour YouTube.
Speaker 1
This is too deep Yeah, I apologize. Okay, this is what you need to remember. If you want to, like, Jets fans, if you're watching this, enjoy us being miserable for a second with stupidity, okay? Last year in New York was when C.J. Stroud was concussed by Quinn and freaking Williams by poor left guard play. So we were terrified going into this game, and that's what happened. Offensive line issue. And
Speaker 2
I hope you didn't get distracted, but, yeah, I was picking up the next-gen stats pass rush numbers as you were talking there to just see the offensive linemen, the pressures. And I saw these stats, and this is a murder scene. Will McDonald had nine pressures, two quick pressures, so that's under two and a half seconds. Quinton Williams had seven, despite 14 double teams. Despite getting double teamed almost every snap, he has seven pressures, four quick ones. So up the middle, that quick. You've woken up Javon Kinlaw. I mean, Laramie Tunsil gave up a big sack in a big spot. So, you know, there were three different times where Stroud took a sack on third down. When it was third and long and they were in field goal range, he kept making those field goals longer. One of them, Fairbairn missed. One of them, he hit. And then, and this is where I do want to get to. You're right, Stroud. I don't think it's something that's going to last. I don't think it's going to be David Carr. No offense to David Carr. But first of all, I don't expect this pressure to continue forever. But I also think players go through streaks where maybe their eyes get down. But Stroud has shown us who he is already as a pro and they'll get it corrected at some point but whether it whether it's perfect this season or not I don't know I want I want to think about two little segments of the game after Corley dropped that ball it just felt like a big moment in the game um he he has Mechie going over the middle Stroud does after another run run pass sequence which they had a number of those in this game. And he was just about to deliver it, and he's getting hit low by Quinnen Williams. And that's probably on the protection, and Stroud can't make the good play. Then later in the game, after they make a field goal to make it a one-point game, it's fourth quarter, mid-fourth quarter. It's going to be 14-13. Jets are getting the ball back. Then they call a penalty on the Jets, unnecessary roughness. They move the ball inside the 10. This is maybe the key sequence in the entire game. Joe Mixon, who starts out the game great, is fantasy owners. As long as they weren't watching throughout, they're happy. 106 yards for a touchdown. But all of that was in the first half. After halftime, even late second quarter, it's one yard, two yard, one yard. It dried up for them. And they're at the seven or eight yard line. And I feel like they're panicky about the pass rush. And they go run, run, pass. Like one yard. I think they might have lost a yard. Like one yard, two yard, or two yard negative.
Speaker 1
It's three yards, no gain. OK, I'm just making things up. Right. No, it's all the same. It's all.
Speaker 2
And so then the third. So the third in goal is the one I kind of wanted to get to. That was the one where that was a little panicky because he actually did get protected for once. And Mechie does kind of come open on that play. And he seemed in between and understandably was just like, I got to get rid of this ball. And he had Mechie open. And that ends up being a really big play because then Fairpan hits hits it off he doinks one from a chip shot range Jets go on for the the killer touchdown and that's really your sequence and then on that very last drive not to beat a dead horse but they're just trying to get a score late and he's missing some throws that it seemed like they were open for him. I'm like, oh, that is not the CJ Stroud that I know finishing 11 for 30 for 191 on the night.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And, um, it's a hodgepodge of things. The offensive line in the past protection in general, I think is the easiest thing to point the finger at. It's the most identifiable. I think that the, and I really, I hate to overly simplify it, but I think that Nico Collins presence last year was probably underrated in how much and how good that offense or at least how much progress that offense made and how good CJ did. It should make a difference. I don't know how much it helps and fixes the pass protection issues, but also some of the there's there's too many times where it doesn't seem like CJ has answers for the blitz. And whether it's just him not not going to the hots quick enough, if it's the the actual play design at various times, I could point the finger. I mean, all of that eventually comes back to the offensive coordinator. And I think, you know, Bobby Sloick, who just got a bunch of interest and a whole lot of buzz about being a head coach, the entire offseason, we were wondering, all right, well, he had a really promising performance with a rookie quarterback, but he hasn't shown that he can create a complete offense. And a lot of that came down to, I talked to you before the season began, I felt like, I felt like even people that were gushing about the Texans offense nationally were kind of ignoring the fact that they did have, they could not run the ball last year, even when it should have been easy to run the ball and now with mixin i mean so much of it even though the blocking is improved so much of it is just mixin being the like a younger mixin like they said on the broadcast it looks like he's five or six years younger than he was he's able to take imperfect blocking and blocking that for a lot of under running backs it's a tackle for a loss or no gain he figures out a way to go get 10 or 12 yards but by the second half the the Jets figured it out you know and the Jets defense started to look a lot more like the Jets defense from the last couple years so they're they're simply not a complete offense with or without Nico Collins you really get no feel that they can use the run game in the pass game to complement each other or to balance each other out. They can't run when they need to run. It's just it's it's been a mediocre offense in terms of scoring. I think they were 14th in scoring headed into this game. And and that's that's pretty much what you said. They can't score in the second half. So that was no surprise to Texans fans that they couldn't score in the second half. They've been miserable in the second half. They're 20th in DVOA on offense going into
Speaker 2
tonight, which is crazy. And I think to your point about Slowick, Stroud's as composed, as impressive a young quarterback as I've ever seen. So I think he's got great players to work with. And it was a little less about the scheme last year and more just about, you know, they built the right offense around him, but excellent players. You have an all-pro left tackle. You have a dynamite quarterback. You have Nico Collins. You have Tank Dell. Now, Tank Dell went six for 126 tonight. I think that was encouraging. For all this honking I've done about Stroud, like the touchdown drive that they had, he had two of the best throws you'll ever see. One to Robert Woods on the run, one to Tank Dell. And then he had the 50-yarder to Tank Dell in the second half, which is just an absolutely insane throw. So the talent's there, the excitement's there. It's not like I think this thing can't get fixed. I'm glad you mentioned the blitz because Jeff Ulbrich deserves credit for when he dialed it up. This has been a bad Jets defense over the last three weeks since he took over. So they get a little credit here for getting the win. Stroud goes 0 for 5 against the Blitz when he threw it. And that says it all. I'm not sure how many sacks he took. I believe it was two sacks on those plays. It was 37. Felt
Speaker 1
like 37 sacks. Yeah, so he
Speaker 2
did not complete a pass against the Blitz, and Hassan Redick makes a difference for this team and in this game. Like, C.J. Stroud was strip-sacked in the first half. They had the ball inside the 10 or inside the 15 early in the game. And that was from a Quinnen Williams pressure on your boy Green. But also on the other side, Clemens collapsing the pocket. Redick was collapsing the pocket all night. He ended up getting a sack. And then C.J. Stroud was trying to step up, but he couldn't step up because there was Quinnen Williams in the middle. So Will McDonald, like they had guys step up and whatever the vision for whoever the Jets are going to be. Yes, it's against this Texans offensive line who have looked bad against everyone, but so have the Patriots and the Texans. I mean, the Jets pass rush looked terrible last week, just five days ago against the Patriots. So it's a pretty big step in the right direction for the Jets to take what's a struggling unit and actually make a difference on defense. It's been a while and they're going to have a long weekend and they're going to feel like, OK, maybe we can build from this.
Speaker 1
They're 2-6, great. There's no looking past the Jets because all you have to do is look at the depth chart. And if there's anybody on the Texans that was looking at the Jets' depth chart and thought, ah, 2-6 football team, you're dead inside. You're dead inside or you're high all the time. They've got players all over the place. The story was that they were... What's that?
Speaker 2
I just said that sounds like a fun combo. Sorry for... Dead and high.
Speaker 1
Well, usually it goes in the other order but yeah um
Speaker 2
they
Speaker 1
it's like there's no there's no let-ups versus this team on a in a prime time game you're just you're going against aaron freaking rogers i don't care what he's looked like this year so far you're going against garrett wilson had had 300 yard games in the previous four games you going against Devontae Adams, who yeah, hadn't done much, but he's Devontae Adams and he's just been on the team for a couple weeks. Last week, the Jets looked against the Patriots like they didn't know. They couldn't get a playoff. They burned last week. The Jets burned three timeouts in the first quarter to avoid delay of games. They got to delay a game in the fourth quarter. And in the first quarter of this game, you had your chance to pounce, right? The Jets were doing all kinds of Jets type things, except the Texans matched them pace for pace with idiotic, weird, stupid things to do. So yeah, I think if I were a Jets fan, you don't want to read too much into a win like this, but that second half, man, they looked, they looked a lot like that depth chart should look when they're playing actual football. Yeah.
Speaker 2
They, they play the card. It was funny. Uh, Al Michaels was great on this. Well, I wouldn't say he was great on this broadcast overall, because like when the game's bad there, it just so low energy. They're just, every once in a while, I just think, doesn't, does the NFL ever watch this and like want announcers who are a little more excited about the game? Because they're always just so complaining when it's a bad game. And the Met Life was dead. They're actually chanting. They were actually chanting, the team as they were going to halftime. And there was booze and Al and Kirk. But when he was talking, he is great in certain aspects too. Al was saying how Aaron Rodgers, when he met with him, just went through this whole thing. And Al was sort of rolling his eyes as he was talking. He was very convincing talking about, well, they'll just beat the Cardinals and they're going to be a Western team going East. And then it'll be a short week and you got the Colts and then you go to a bye and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, you can kind of make the case there. They can win any of these games. None of them are locks. And so the Jets could get back into it at three and six. The problem is, are they that much like more likely to win any of these games than lose? They all seem about like 50-50 propositions. As much as the Texans have probably been like a four and four type of team instead of six and two coming in, I think the Jets have been closer to a 500 team and they just keep losing these heartbreaking close games. And so it'll probably balance out, but that still just means you're a 500 team. It doesn't mean you're about to go on some great run. I
Speaker 1
think it's a big one to win this game tonight for the Jets. This is the very moment in the season when professionalism can start to wane. If the team is just dead in the water, then your younger players or your less professional players kind of start to let go of the rope a little bit and just let the water take them down. They start staying out a little later. They're not in the weight room as early. So that's a big boost at this point in the season. I think for the Texans, the trend has just been kind of a steady degradation from week one until now to where things look like they're starting to catch up with some of their deficiencies that like the Texans tackling even on defense as good as they've been on defense the first few weeks they were really sound tacklers then you saw tonight lots of missed tackles lots of poor angles lots of just giving guys like guys that look like they do on the depth chart, the chance to break long runs. You know what, though? I got to blame Bill Belichick a little bit, I think. I didn't need Bill Belichick going out, criticizing Hassan Redick and then Hassan Redick firing back on him on social media. I don't know if you saw that.
Speaker 2
I didn't. I didn't see the firing back. No.
Speaker 1
Oh, no. Belichick just had mentioned on the McAfee show or on one of the 19 outlets he's on that Hassan Redick was just kind of running past the quarterback last week. So Hassan Redick said something like, Belichick sounds like he's just sitting at home and bored. He needs a job. And I was like, well, I mean, he's probably making more money than you at his current jobs. But he
Speaker 2
showed
Speaker 1
up tonight. I I mean, yeah.

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