Texans All-Access: DeMeco Ryans on C.J. Stroud, Baker Mayfield & MNF vs. Bucs

Texans All-Access: DeMeco Ryans on C.J. Stroud, Baker Mayfield & MNF vs. Bucs

in the Hyundai Texans radio studio with head coach Dico Ryan. Coach, great to see you. Thanks for being with us. See you guys. All right, here we go into week two with Tampa Bay coming up. Just wrapping up the Rams game which was a couple of days ago as we do this. Is there something you could take with with you? I know there have to be a few things that you liked that you saw that you want to use in week two and there’s a lot you want to improve as well. For sure. Our team definitely did some really good things all three phases. Guys did some nice nice things, made some nice plays. Uh the takeaway is hey we’re there in the fourth quarter with a chance and opportunity to go win the ball game. as bad as it may seem as if we didn’t play well or whatever that looks like, we had an opportunity and that’s the NFL, right? 11 games last week came down to one score games, right? And so when you look at it that way, like how are you going to make the plays necessary to put yourself in a winning seat when you’re in that fourth quarter? That’s what I take from it. And the the main thing for us is how can we control the controllables? How do we control those things? That’s uh tempo in and out of the huddle to make sure we’re at the line of scrimmage. We can make the right calls, checks we need to make. We control that, right? The pen hands too high or your pads are not low enough. We control that, right? If we control those things, that mitigates some of the penalties that we were making that kind of shot ourselves in the foot and now we’re in second and long, third and long. And those are uphill battles that you just don’t want to be in in a game. So, if we can come out this week, control the controllables, and just put oursel in position to have a chance to compete, then let’s see what happens. I know we talked about this a lot, coach. The physicality, defensively was there. What did you think when you went back and watched the film offensively from a physicality standpoint? There were a couple times where I was like, whoa, that looked really good. What did you think when you went back and looked at overall just the physicality of your team in general? Yeah, our team plays physical. You put the tape on. You talked about the defense. I mean, guys are hitting. I don’t want to play against our defense if I’m wrong. But, I mean, the way Kamari comes up and hits as a corner. I mean, it’s it’s no no one better at doing it. Henry played physical. Z like we all our guys played physical up front offensive line. I thought Titus played physical. He had some nice finishes on some plays. Well, of course, Kade was straining playing physical as well. unfortunate. You know, we’ll miss him for a little bit, but there there are glimpses of physicality all throughout our tape, right? And and that’s how we should play. That’s what Texans football look like. Now, we just got to clean up some of the other little finer details and we’ll be we’ll be off and rolling. when you had two good defenses playing clutch ball at the end because you got the ball out with Aziz’s hit and threw the challenge flag, didn’t get that call, so you had to throw the flag and you probably felt pretty confident about that at the time. Got the ball back, able to get it into scoring range. I know it didn’t work out ultimately, but you had to feel good about that defensive takeaway. Oh, felt outstanding. That was the one thing we talk about throughout the week, like this game is going to come down to the ball, right? and we have to take the ball away. And I’m always I’m on the the mic. I’m always talking to Aziz before the series. Hey, remember we got to get the ball. Got to get the ball. Got to get the ball. Came down to that one, but we got it at the right time at a critical moment. And then you see how the ball goes. Same for them and their defense. Like the corner made an outstanding play. Higgins goes up. He has the ball in his hands. Guy takes the ball away. Great play by him. And then their linebacker, I mean, uh, Dar is going down to the ground. the ball’s a little loose, he punches it exactly. I mean, at the pinpoint accuracy, like an outstanding play by him. Uh, but that’s the game. You have to protect the ball, you have to attack the ball, and that’s always our main emphasis. Coach, when that play happened, that bootleg, not talked about by anybody, but Will Anderson shuts down the first guy going to the flat, which forced him to go to Parkinson. So, he gets the ball, the ball comes out, the line judge in front of us is waving, incomplete, incomplete. From that point to the point that you threw the challenge flag, what was kind of going because I looked to see whether you were going to do it and I saw your eyes first go up. Mhm. What was kind of the process of you deciding to go ahead and throw the flag at that point. Yeah. Well, it was an interesting play because as I see it, you know, the ball is out, everyone is excited. And I see as the line just coming, he he waited for a minute, right? He he didn’t immediately say incompleter. So he was so I I talked to him and I like what’s your process? What are you right? And then he was like he had to replay it in his mind and that and I’m trying to look up on the screen. Let me see if I get a replay which obviously you’re in the away state. You’re not getting the replay. And then man just from the guys upstairs also asking them, hey what did you guys see? Are can you guys see a replay? Right. Like can you guys Man at that point in the game timeouts didn’t matter. like we needed to we needed that ball. And the the main thing also is you throw the challenge flag there because uh Denil Hunt also that’s the that’s the play. Denil, if you watch the play again, Denil is he’s probably the farthest guy from our sideline. He comes over and he gets down, he gets the ball. So for us having a clear recovery by our defense is we had to challenge that one, right? Yeah. You have to make sure you get that part, too. You have to make sure we had you don’t have it. So, when I saw you look up at the board, I was like, “Man, I know. I I want to see a replay of this, but I got a feeling we’re not seeing one for a while.” Yeah, that that was amazing stuff. Okay. Offensively, we saw some good things running the football. You were able to get a good yard per carry number in the game. I know you wanted to be better on third down, though, so you get more of those opportunities, right? Yeah, for sure. I think uh Chub ran the ball really well. Uh we tried to mix it up with the backs. Uh got Woody some touches, Damen. Well, we’re going to try to lean in with Chub a little bit more. I think he deserves it. He’s shown that he continued to he continued to get better as the game went on. You saw him running stronger, finishing plays in a physical manner. So, we got to get him going a little bit more, right? And I think he can he can really help us. CJ did a nice job helping that rushing average by scrambling a little bit. Such a nice drive there before the two-minute. I mean, during the two-minute uh at half, he did a really nice job scrambling to put himself in position to get points there. So, I think offensive line just stay after with our double teams being a hat on a hat that won’t change. We’re always want to get a hat on a hat in a run game and really emphasize our wide receivers getting in blocking and support players and that’ll help our run game continue to thrive. Coach always said this about teams if they’re good at the end of halves, end of games, that’s a that’s a really good coaching staff and well, you know how I feel about you. I think you’re great at what you do, but the fact that you give up the touchdown, which I know bothered you cuz you had guys there to make a play, but the way you responded in that last two-minute drill and then the way you responded, I think you got the ball at just under four minutes or at four minutes and what you did to kind of move the ball forward in that part. You work on situations all the time at training camp and preseason. Did you kind of feel like all that work you saw in those two kind of last part of the half and last part of the game drives from CJ and the offense? You definitely see it and in those moments, you just want to see your guys just have the confidence like been here before, done it, know what to expect, and just seeing our guys operate with confidence. Seeing our offense start to drive down the field with even more confidence in those two minute situations than some of the other moments in the game, right? It’s very encouraging to see what we’re capable of. We just have to put it together for 60 minutes, but you know, very proud of our coaching staff and our coaches for having our guys, you know, being confident in those situations. Right. CJ running the football coach, he makes plays that way. Made the play to get you into field goal range at the end of the half. I know you don’t want to see it all the time, but it is a valuable weapon selectively. Yeah, it is a very great weapon. I mean, when when he does it the right way, like stepping up in the pocket, escaping, it unlocks a defense. Right now, he’s put on tape several times that he will run, he can gain the first down. So, what do you do as a coverage player? Are you staying back in coverage? Are you coming up to get the quarterback? That’s the the part that you put defenders in a bind. If you want to come up now, he still has the capability. LA Chargers playoff game, right? Get it, scramble and throw it downfield as well. So, him continuing to work those where he can escape the pocket and make you pay downfield, that that threat is is hard to stop. So, I encourage him to continue to do whatever it takes for us to win games. Coach, most of the guys on defense were guys that were here last year for the most part and then CJ gets hurt and so he missed the preseason game. So, this is really the first time having CJ on the field. What was that like with just communication, movement? I saw there was one play, I’m trying to remember which one it was, where CJ was on the fly, like pointing at Kalin because motion was going that way for him to get up and CJ was going back. How was kind of that communication with CJ that first game? What’ you think of the way you played? The communication, it it was solid. It was a couple good moments, some not so great moments, things we have to improve on with our communication and just how we’re operating in the back end. So, we got to see more improvement from our from our secondary guys. Uh, what about the kickoff game, Coach? Fair had great day kicking field goals and he was on his way to AFC special teams player of the week maybe in that category, but I know you want to see better performances out of kickoffs and fielding the ball, but it is weird with this landing zone and bad hops and do I field it or not and that kind of thing. How do you address that? I think the NFL we got what we want, right? You got a play that you have to put your eyes on now because what who knows what will happen? that ball hits the ground, bouncing all over the place. Uh, man, we first off as a kick return unit, we have to feel the ball better. I think we put ourselves in a a negative spot too many times by allowing the ball to roll in the end zone. We takes the touchback. Now we’re at the 20 yardd line. So, their kicker did a really nice job of hitting some kicks. I have to give him that. Give him credit. He hit some nice kicks. They were difficult. I’m not saying it’s easy by any means, but we got to just continue to work on that. And from the kickoff perspective, like once the ball hits the ground, we can take off. So our eyes, we have to be locked and loaded, ready to see once the ball hits, you got to take off. And we got to do a better job of just avoiding blocks. We allowed the play to get out. Uh the big big return, we allowed it to get out. Luckily, Dar drew a holding uh penalty, but we still we can’t allow that. Everybody got to get off blocks and play faster and finish at the ball carrying. I’m not going to say you’re an old school player, but when you did play, the touchback was at the 20 yardd line. It’s got to be weird for you that now the 20 feels like I’m in my own end zone or something compared to the 30 35. It’s crazy. Yeah, it does. Old school player. Tell you what, when you see from behind the kicks that Cardi made for the Rams, he looks like who’s a modernday knuckle baller. I don’t even know. I’d go to Joe Nero. That’s what I would go to. That ball was moving all over the place and then boom, it hits and you’re like, you got no idea. I mean, even you played shortstop back in the day, you have no idea where that ball is going once it hits. I mean, it was it was incredible. Coach, you mentioned CJ and his ability to scramble, get out of the pocket, do those things. The quarterback we faced Monday night can do that a little bit, too. We saw him a couple years ago. And Baker Mayfield, I know you’re probably not all the way into your Bucks prep at this point, but just from what you remember facing Baker and a guy just that has that mobility, that has those guts in the two-minute drill to go down and make a play, there’s a challenge on Monday night facing a guy like Baker. What are your early thoughts? Yeah, Baker is playing the best of his career. He keeps their team in games because of his ability to scramble um and make plays down the field. Passing wise, they have and arguably one of the best receivers that do it. And Mike Evans, he’s mean, he’s productive every year. Every year he’s making plays and he’s still doing that. They add the young kid, Egg Bua from Ohio State. He pops off the tape and he made some nice plays versus Atlanta on uh on yesterday. So, it’s it’s going to be a fun challenge. Baker is a guy we got to find a way with our defensive line. You got to find a way to keep him in the pocket, make him uncomfortable, right? Make it difficult for him to see, make sure we’re getting our hands up because he does have a low trajectory throw. But we got to make sure we’re covering him. And that starts where we can improve defensively from our last week to this week is our eyes have to be right. We have to play with great eye discipline. when we when we got loose on some plays against the Rams, our eye our eye discipline was not on. So, if we play that the right way, make it as challenging as possible with our Dline getting after Baker and we’ll be in a really good spot. Yeah, it’s a big contrast from week one. They’re both really good quarterbacks, but Stafford doesn’t move around as much. He does have that lightning rod delivery though, but Baker has a pretty good arm as well. Yeah, Baker has a great arm, but that’s the we have to be ready now. Stafford’s just standing back in the pocket like statue. Now we got a squirrel running all over the place. We got to be able to be able to get him down. But I’m I’m confident in our guys. Uh played him before. Uh he made some nice plays versus us. We were able to bounce back and make some plays versus them. It’s going to be a good battle. Todd does a really good job. He’s done a great job his entire coaching career of mixing up the pressures, making it difficult for offenses. And you know, they they’ve kept some continuity. Although they lost Liam Cohen last year. They just moved up Josh Krisard and he’s running the same offense, right? He knows what Baker likes. You can tell they’re doing similar things. This will be a little different with the run game. We’ll see more gap scheme runs than we’ve seen before. A lot of offensive linemen pulling. All right. So, we got to be ready to fit those runs. That’ll be a little different for us. And then you just got to be sound in your coverages. Coach, you mentioned it with Todd BS and pressure packages. And we know that you want to be successful on first and second down so that you’re not third and 12, you’re not having penalties, those kind of things. Is it that much more important because of how Todd calls the defense and the pressure packages he brings to be that much more on it? So you’re not third and 12, you’re third and two if anything else. Yeah, we have to have a heightened sense of urgency to make sure that when that picture changes, because I spoke about he does a really good job of really disguising the blitzes so you don’t know who’s coming when they’re coming. But when that picture change, we have to be ready to react and make the proper adjustments so we can play on schedule. We can stay on track, get out, man, second and medium, right? Third and medium. That’s where we want to operate and that’s where we’ll thrive and we’ll be able to sustain drives and we get longer drives. It’s going to lead to points. Coach, two years ago we had noon start, noon start, noon start every week. It was very routine. This year you start out west coast late game, get back late. Now you have Monday night football and that’s what happens when you’re a good team. You have these prime time games. So how do you handle this week? We know you gave the guys maybe a Monday breather of sorts, but going through the week, you kind of push everything back a day to simulate a regular game week, right? Yeah, we try our best when we have the opportunity to simulate a regular game week, right? Where we have a our Wednesday, Thursday, Friday practice model and then we have a day before game. So, we gave the guys an extra day on Monday. Now, we’ll just we push the week back so everything feels normal to the guys. guys should be rested and recovered from the from the West Coast trip and having these games at different times and different days. I just tell her when the ball is kicked off, let’s go. Let’s go play. It really doesn’t matter. You try to get on this time schedule. It’s a little different. It’s going to be different. It’s like, but you’re playing football, right? Let’s don’t don’t forget keep the main thing the main thing. Let’s go play football great. Whenever it’s kicked off, whatever day it’s on, let’s go handle it the right way. And you know more than anybody having played defense in this building that this crowd can be your 12th man getting it getting it hype making Baker have to really work to get communication. How important does the crowd become jacked up on Monday night? Man we need it big time right especially defense right man we can have our crowd loud making it uncomfortable making it difficult for them to communicate. It’s always an advantage. It’s always that 12man advantage. So we need that always from our fans. We’re here at home. Got a lot of opportunities here at home to help the team in a positive way. So, we’re looking forward to our fans doing that for us. And the game starts at 6. 6:00. I’m going to say it for the camera. All right. Coach wants you there early. He’ll give you a note so you can leave work early. There you go. Sorry I made that promise for you, coach. But along the lines of you saying, “Hey, when they kick the ball, we just got to be ready, right?” You were talking about injuries this way. You have some injuries. No doubt. You dealt with injuries week one this year. went into the game with some issues and more issues creep up all the time in the NFL, but you made the point, you got to be ready to go. It doesn’t matter. I mean, when you played here, you were part of the next manup season of 2011. And you’ve had some next manup situations here already in your first two years, and here we go again. Yeah, for sure. And that’s that’s what the NFL is all about. And so many great stories of guys who took advantage of their opportunity when a guy went down, right? And Tom Brady, guy goes down, like there he is. like you get your opportunity and you know the other part is you have so many the guys who are on this team you talk about practice squad guys or the second team guys like every guy believes they should be starting. Yeah. Right. And every guy believes they can do it like and I just want my chance. So that’s what the room is made of. So it’s so many guys that I can’t wait to see like what do you do with that opportunity? And when you get it don’t look back like make it yours. Take that job. make it yours and impact the team in a positive way to make it better. All right. I know one guy that we’re going to end up missing for a little bit, coach. You mentioned and that’s Kate Stove. Yes. And it looked like Sunday he was doing some really good things. What had you seen from Kate up to this point? I know we’ll miss him for a little bit. What have you seen from him up to this point? Yeah, he was one of our most improved players all throughout the off seasonason training camp. Most improved and even in that game, just seeing the way he was blocking at the line of scrimmage, seeing the strain, the physicality like he actually he hurt himself on a play where he’s going to kick out a defensive end and he’s just straining unfortunately hurt his foot. Um, and we’re going to miss him, right? He brings that toughness, that edge to our offense, uh, that we need. So, next man up, we’ll got to step in and get rolling, man. But um definitely going to miss his presence because he’s a he’s a leader in his own way for our team. All right, the AMA Bank Ask Coach question of the week. A listener wants to know, is there anybody you could share with us that you talk to outside of the building, a mentor of yours from time to time, whether it’s to get coaching advice or just life advice for coaching or however it would relate relate to the question, coach? Yeah, coaching uh mentor is Johnny Holland. Johnny uh Texas&M Aggie. So, he’s a a guy who he coached me here when I was with the Texans, and he’s always been a great friend. Uh great guy I can talk to anytime. Always. I mean, you talk about life advice, coaching advice, he’s the guy that I rely on the most. Excellent, coach. Thanks a lot for joining us. Good luck. You guys.

DeMeco Ryans explains how C.J. Stroud’s legs stress defenses, why eye discipline matters, and how Houston cleans up penalties from Week 1. Then it’s Tampa Bay preview—containing Baker Mayfield, handling gap-scheme runs, disguises from Todd Bowles, and covering Mike Evans. Also: defensive takeaways, Dare Ogunbowale’s hustle, crowd noise at NRG, and Stover’s progress. Hosted by Marc Vandermeer & John Harris.
Houston Texans, Texans podcast, Week 2 preview, Texans defense highlights.
Subscribe: https://bit.ly/3UH7n0E

Tickets: https://www.houstontexans.com/tickets/