Reaction To Houston Texans Roster Move And DeMeco Ryans Press Conference

Reaction To Houston Texans Roster Move And DeMeco Ryans Press Conference

All right. Uh, I’m sorry if I alarmed anybody with the thumbnail. That that picture of Woody Mars is from the Jacksonville game, but obviously Woody’s been banged up and dealing with some stuff. He’s become the workhorse back for the Texans over these last few weeks. The Texans signed Cody Schrader today. Uh, running back out of Missouri by way of Truman State, who had a very productive college career, has had one carry and one reception somewhere. I can’t keep the numbers straight in my head in the NFL, but I’ve got Cody Schrader highlights, but this is the comment from Demo yesterday. That got me a little bit concerned about the running back situation in general. Woody Woody’s done a nice job of I say as a running back like when you get, you know, the bulk of the carries like it it takes a toll on you. I think he’s handled himself, you know, very well, taking care of his body, but you know, it’s hard playing running back in this league. And Woody, he’s played physical. He’s fought through some nicks and bumps along the way. So, I’m proud of the way that he continues to push through. Uh even though he’s battling, he’s pushing through. Uh we’ll see where Chub ends up this week. Know he had the rib injury throughout the game. Uh so, we’ll see how this week goes with him. See if he can he can get back out there for us. Yeah. And uh I mean Chub is that that’s about as transparent as Demo will get early in the week. Say we’ll see if Chub can be out there for us. Obviously, Gumbo is um was an option late in the game, and we’re going to need somebody to take the load off of Woody, either uh because of the injury sustained in the game or just because of wear and tear. Here’s Cody Strader. This is from the preeason, mind you, but still, you can see some elements of Woody Marks. He’s he’s 5’8, 202, so he’s a smaller guy, but he is not afraid to lower his shoulder. like he bulldozes for extra contact. Um he can be used as a receiver. So if you’re trying to replace somebody that’s got a sk similar skill set or body type or athletic type as Woody Marks and maybe Cody Schrader would be a good mixup, but he’s got very little very limited NFL experience. Been with a couple teams on their practice squads. But uh look, I get excited about running backs in the preseason. It’s a weakness of mine. I caution everybody against it every year. but he looked good in the preseason this year. He was kind of the star of the Rams first preseason game. Got action in all three of their games this year. It was his second year in the NFL. So, we’ll see what comes of that. Um, you know, this is you got to be nervous when you’ve got a 205 lb running back who’s your bellcow back. And, you know, Jir Gibbs and David Montgomery up in Detroit can offset each other and balance things out. We don’t really have that luxury with Nick Chub or Daria Gumbbo. Um, will we see him this week? I’m not sure. I I I have no way of predicting or telling you that. Wanted to respond to a few other things that Demo said both in the uh press conference and in the coach’s show. Starting off with Demo on CJ. Got a we’ll spend a little bit on the offense today since I’ve been gushing about the defense for 48 straight hours. Here’s Demo on the coach’s show with Mark and John talking about uh what he likes about CJ so far this season and where he needs to improve. Yeah, the things I like for CJ is uh the movement like the movement out of the pocket, escaping the pocket, keeping plays alive. I really liked him keeping his eyes downfield, making plays, especially some of the critical third downs he made to Higgins, Nico, uh Dalton, like he made some really nice throws there. Um, and also the next game probably I could have said this first, just some of the what I call the sack saver plays. Some of those plays where he’s feeling that pressure guys are on him where in the past we’ve taken those sacks. He did a great job of just dirting the football, getting rid of it, knowing, hey, they they got us on this play. Let’s not make a bad play worse. So, great decisions by him there. And some improvements. I think there’s some throws I think we can we could have back. Um, think we can make a a better throw there to Nico so we can score on the first play and we we uh the first explosive where we run past a defender. Uh, but I think he’ll just keep working into it, keep improving, making uh better throws, but overall really great decision making by him. Yeah. Real quick on the uh throw there, the underthrow. I know that people were wondering, you know, a lot of people were angrily defending this, saying, “No, it was no big deal.” you know, yeah, he was able to step into it there. Um the uh we’ll get to the blitz in a little bit, but his ability to throw on the move in that game, especially on some of those third down conversions, all of that very good. Um some of the balls and where his numbers his numbers maybe look a little less efficient than he actually was, partly because he was getting rid of the ball when they were under duress with the blitz, but it’s the offense’s ability to handle the blitz. Um the CJ’s ability to make plays with enough time at the line of scrimmage. That’s the stuff that’s concerning right now. It was on the road in Kansas City. Kansas City’s defense has been very good at home this year when they get the advantage of the sound and their ability to disguise pre-nap. It’s it’s a tough environment. The other big thing with the Texans, as many of us have noticed and uh we’ve talked about on this year podcast before, is man, when when they face a tough interior defensive lineman, it’s not so hot. Like Devandre Sweat and Jeffrey Simmons especially took a bad defense that the Titans had and turned them into an almost unstoppable force when both of those guys were healthy at times uh against the Texans. So, that’s my my biggest concern, not as much about the regular season, but getting into the playoffs is when you face those stud interior defensive linemen. Um, this one uh just because I’m going to point out some positives before we go on to some of the negatives about the blitz. This is a real this play. CJ had actually moved Woody Marks over to the left. uh you know he had plenty of time to operate and then Woody looks like he’s going to block releases and that was like that was masterful work by CJ Stout. Woody marks it aligned to the right originally. CJ moved to the left and it looked like he anticipated this pressure look really really well. This is relatively vanilla by what the by what the the Rams I excuse me. The Chiefs were really in their bag when it came to the when they look their best when they’re blitzing or times where they had seven guys at the line of scrimmage and they all stayed at the line of scrimmage. Um which makes it really really difficult and you just don’t have the numbers to to figure that out. Some of it falls on the receivers and making their adjust adjustments. They just they they just weren’t dialed in. But CJ did make some really nice plays against the Blitz. This is De Mo on the offense as a whole and where they need to improve. Look, there are a lot of things offensively I think we have to improve upon specifically in the half and coming out at the second at the second the beginning of the second half is is not good enough for us. We got to move the ball better in those situations. All right. And when it comes to the pressures, there’s things to learn from. We got to operate much faster um with just the timing of everything. Getting the play calls in and out of the huddle, getting the line properly, making the right ID, getting guys picked up the proper way. Like we have to operate more efficiently. We have to operate with much more urgency on the offensive side of the football. You’ll continue to see those type of pressures, right? That that showed up. So, there’s a lot of room for improvement there and we have to see that improvement very quickly. Okay, let’s go back to this one real quick because that something caught my eye that I hadn’t noticed before. Uh, let’s see. It was this one. Blake Fischer, they’ve got their six offensive lineman package in. And I always wonder sometimes where All right, it’s cool you got six offensive linemen in, but that means you’re going to have one less guy out on a route and then what do you end up with? Our old friend George, is that George Caroftus on Blake Fischer? Oh, no, it’s not Carlus. It’s just a pass rusher on Blake Fischer. But, uh, you know, they’re trying to hem up, this is what happens. You’re trying to hem up Chris Jones and get two, be sure you have two guys on Chris Jones, but you end up with Blake Fischer on an edge rusher. And I I mean, this isn’t an exotic blitz or anything. It’s just because Chris Jones was destroying those guys on the inside, you end up getting one-on- ones that aren’t aren’t ideal. And I think this is the that’s the hard part is that there’s no one individual thing I can point to. There were times where I think CJ could have anticipated better. There were other times where um CJ knew he had to go hot. He read the blitz. Like there was just a numbers m sometimes there’s going to there’s going to be times where if you unblocked where you have unblocked pass rushers. It’s on the quarterback to react to it but also the receivers to get their eyes on CJ. And the one time when you remember when CJ threw to the left and uh and he couldn’t get it to Daltton Schulz, he just he didn’t have eyes on him um with enough time to throw with a guy in his face. So, it’s it’s the whole operation. And I know that’s that’s frustrating because I wish I could come in and just point to one person, but Demo himself said it. We’ve got to get the call in faster. We got to ID the mic that’s on the quarterback. We got to get everybody aligned. Everybody needs to know exactly where they’re supposed to be aligned and the motions got to be precise because we get these procedural issues and then sometimes there’s just offensive linemen that offensive line hasn’t been guilty of mental errors nearly as often as they were last year. Um but there’s times where they’re just getting physically beat and there are the the odd misreads by offensive linemen. That the the last part there is what I feel most optimistic about. I do think that they are still a much better offensive line when it comes to the fundamentals and I, you know, unfortunately with an 0 and3 start, it’s hard to expect a whole lot of home games in the playoffs. If they can fight their way to a division win or something, then that might change a little bit. But that’s going to continue to be a problem. This is um this was just a fun little one because Sarge asked about whether he whether De Mo thought it was disrespectful to the defense as some of the players had said to Sarge when Andy Reid went for it in their own territory on fourth down. Some of the players said on the defense side of the ball said it kind of felt it felt kind of disrespectful with the way that they were playing. Did you see it that way as well? No, I I didn’t see it as disrespectful at all. I saw it just knowing my that was my first thought like just knowing Andy and knowing how he’s been they’re aggressive team on fourth down. It hasn’t shown up in those situations but I just felt like how the game was going it wasn’t surprising that he would go for it there and know in that in that moment he felt like they would have made a play cuz the previous play right they they they had one open that they felt like they would they made it and the guy dropped the football. So, I see why, you know, he went for it and, you know, we went for it there and our guy, you know, Stingley showed up and made an outstanding play there on fourth down. Yeah. My my thought on it was that it was disrespectful by Andy Reid to his own defense. I mean the the at that point the Texans had one first down in the second half and they had come out and they had four straight three and outs followed by a six and out or was it three straight three and outs followed by a six. It was a lot and it was with only one first down. You’re in your own territory and the Texans are immediately in field goal position. I felt that was disrespectful to the Chiefs defense and the way they’d been playing in the second half for Andy Reid to do that. I’m not going to relitigate it or anything. I know the numbers, some of the numbers support it, but the game flow certainly didn’t. That was I mean that was the game right there. He just you can win or lo when you can win or lose a game on one play. I I prefer it to be some sometime inside of 2 minutes, but that was kind of it for them. Uh somebody asked a question, Platypus fan, why do we have so many procedural penalties? Is it a lack of practice or is it experience? Um I don’t think it’s lack of practice and I do think that Kaylee does a good job of having focused practices. I think part of it is lack of experience in this system and when they’re trying to they’re trying to use motion because we all do this, don’t we? We get if our if our offense isn’t using motion, we’re like, why? They’re antiquated. Why are they acting like cavemen? The thing you have to remember about using a whole lot of pre- snap motion is that it is it’s hard to do. Like you need guy guys have to be dialed in mentally and it takes reps. I remember I used to uh when I was in Jacksonville, we had a guy named Kyle Brady, tight end, awesome guy. Uh, but that we had an offense where they were using tight end motion all the time. And every day in practice, Tom Coughlin would read out the mental errors from the day before and and poor poor Kyle Brady had like five mental errors per practice cuz they were asking him to move so much. He was he was tired all the time. He was in shape. He was in incredibly good shape. But it’s just it’s taxing. And I think they’re just trying to find that balance cuz I know one of uh one of you had also asked like why can the defense play so fast and physical but the offense seems to make it overly complex if if you’re unless you’ve just got the Dallas Cowboys 1990s offensive line. It’s hard to just say, “Hey, we’re just going to go up and smash you in the mouth and that’s how we’re going to do it.” Texans have tried it that way. Remember remember their smashmouth football on the goal line and whatnot. So, you got to find some blend between complexity and just smashmouth football. And I think that’s what they’re still trying to do. And doing it on the road in that environment, in that stadium in the cold is also um also a factor. This one I was adamant before the game that I didn’t think the cold was going to be a factor. I look at some of CJ’s misfires in that game and I h I have to wonder without ever being able to know because nobody’s ever going to admit to it if maybe the the cold was a little bit of a factor in that game and again that’ll that’ll come into play in the playoffs. That’s just and I’m not accusing I’m not saying that’s what it was or anything but I have to be honest with you guys and I confess to wondering a little bit about it. Let’s see. We saw the motion is hard thing with the illegal shift. They were just too fast starting the second motion before resetting. I’m going to tell you another thing that bothers me about that because I felt like it was a I felt that they could have let it slide. And the thing that the reason that I really felt that they maybe could have let it slide was cuz remember the play where the all the Chiefs fans were convinced that there was an offsides by the Texans. And the the problem with that is that here did I do slow-mo? I don’t know whether I did this in slow-mo or not. Okay, that play you watch look at look at Mark. Okay, so first we’ll watch no offsides there, right? You can see clearly there’s no offsides, but then look at Maris Brown uh at the snap moving forward. Not like, all right, I don’t know. I’m just a dumb defensive lineman, but I feel like I can tell that Maris Brown was moving towards the line. This isn’t Canada. Not allowed to do that. And uh so if there was a mis call on that play, if you could review those things, I think the Texans were wronged. Damn it. I’m going to I got to get going. I was supposed to cook white. I was I offered to cook dinner tonight. Um and I I I should have gotten started on it a half hour ago. So thanks everybody uh to for everything all the time.

Former Houston Texans player Seth Payne gives his reaction to the Texans’ signing of running back Cody Schrager and also some comments DeMeco Ryans made about CJ Stroud and the offense