The Houston Texans Defense Is A Different Beast: Texans vs Chiefs Preview

The Houston Texans Defense Is A Different Beast: Texans vs Chiefs Preview

All right, got the dry got the kinks out. The Houston Texans defense. This is the week where it seems like the entire national media is just gushing about the Texans defense given their last couple weeks performances versus Josh Allen, an injured Daniel Jones, but they now face Patrick Mahomes. This is going to be a marquee matchup on Sunday Night Football. Um, look, the Texans defense was already good last year. After that game last year, people were gushing about the after the playoff loss about just how physical and aggressive the Texans defense was. They’ve actually gotten better this year, not just statistically, but a lot of it is rooted in the discipline with which they play. JJ Watt talked about this after he did the color commentary for the Colts game last week and I’ve got some clips mixed in. I mean, the number one thing you see about this defense is just pure intensity and violence. the way that they attack people. They have such strong bull rushes, speed to power, which then opens up all their speed rushes, their spins, everything else that comes along with it. And they do it together as a group. They never really let the quarterback slip out or they never both get behind him or both get in front of him. They don’t give escape lanes. They keep them bottled up. And it’s very difficult for quarterbacks to play against that. Yeah. And look, this is a big thing in today’s NFL, obviously, where you face your Josh Allens, where you face your Patrick Mahomes. The Chiefs are going to likely be down at least two starting offensive linemen, possibly three. We know Josh Simmons, the left tackle, is out for sure. Uh Trey Smith and Jawan Taylor are both really banged up. So, we’ll see about that. The Texans are going to have an advantage on the edges. They they have an advantage on the edges against pretty much every team they go against. The Bills, the Bills had been a really good offensive line. I haven’t checked in on him since the Texans took it to him for eight sacks, but Pat Mahomes and his ability to scramble obviously we know is a very big deal. Both for positive yardage, but also to scramble to buy time and throw. Keeping him in the pocket is is really really key. The Texans do this really well in a few ways. And if we just look at this play here where the defensive tackle does a great job of mirroring Josh Allen getting in the passing lane, the Texans ran a spy on that as well. You look at Aziz Alshshire up there. He starts to enter the rush. Like there’s a lot of red in his face there. One thing that the Colts and one thing that the Texans need to think about, but that the Colts likely are probably crafty with is some of the things that you can do to screw up the contain. If you watch Denil Hunter, the right defensive end here, he slants inside and you think, “Oh no, he blew contain.” No, he was planning on taking the slant inside. Mario Edwards was going to replace to his right, but the Bills offensive lineman nefariously holds him just and you see the umpire up there on the right. The umpire used to stand behind the line of scrimmage uh on the defensive side of the ball and he would see stuff like this. But now these guys, these bastards get away with this stuff all the time. The thing you got to be is really violent with your hand if you are the looper. That’s and these guys are generally good at that. It’s just sometimes versus crafty offensive lines, you got to go psycho on that just to get outside and contain the passer. Um, but they’re going to the Texans are better at that this year. And the the really encouraging thing about it is that there’s so many times where the pocket is collapsing and nobody cares who gets the sack. the defensive ends instead of just flying by the quarterback hoping to maybe get a hand in, they’re bending it back to the quarterback so that even if they don’t get a hit on the quarterback, there’s no place to run and the pocket is squeezing. They did an excellent job of that against Daniel Jones and he just wasn’t mobile enough to even try to escape. But they did a really good job versus Josh Allen versus some of the other mobile quarterbacks this year. The Texans, the Texans when they don’t get home, that’s when the onus is on the secondary. Obviously Chris Long talks here a little bit uh about the secondary but then also toaoa specifically and Will Anderson there is a level of violence yes and speed on the field. They can play man coverage and just play off like and and and they break on the ball and like they were hammering in cuts and there was a sequence in this game where it went toeto toe and he ran through the middle of the pocket and just put a dent in I think it was Jonathan Taylor’s face mask. Uh it the violence. And then the next play, Will Anderson’s Big Ass is the floater standing over um the center and runs him over. The violence with which they play. Yeah. Uh sorry I cut you off there. The violence with which they play. The cool thing about this, and I noticed this, I didn’t keep the initial part of this, but if you watch Henry Toa at the very beginning, he’s got his hand, he had just been pointing behind his back with some kind of hand signal cuz he had he had stunted the first time over to his left and then when they reset the snap count, they tweaked the blitz a little bit, I think, um, so that they wouldn’t pick it up as easily. That’s that’s like some next level stuff. That’s something the Chiefs defense is actually really good at doing. The Chiefs will do two things really well defensively. I’m trying to talk about the Texans defensive defense here, but I just out of respect to both sides of the ball. The Chiefs defense does two things really well. One is if if they jump and they realize that the offense knows what blitz is coming, they’ll switch it up. The Chiefs defense also will if they can if they catch like that maybe they’ve got a blitz on um and that the offense adjusts to it, they’ll call the blitz off completely. or if they can tell that the offense checked from a run into a pass or something, they might just call a blitz off and drop everybody off into coverage. They’re really smart on the field. The Texans are starting to get that level. Spagnolo’s just had a lot of time working with those guys and he’s a freaking mad genius. We’ll talk about that more later this week. Here’s um the Anderson penalty from last year because I have a theory about this. For one, this is one of two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties that Oh, that guy. That guy from last week. Oh my god. You couldn’t never tell from any of these angles whether there was actually a helmet to helmet contact. What I’m going to say here is one thing the Texans have talked about in the offseason is whether Will hit him in the helmet or not. And I know Chiefs fans who are here will be vehemently arguing that it’s obvious he did. Texans fans will be saying he’s not. This little dip of the helmet right there is what you can’t even give that referee who’s standing right there the reason to think about it. And I do think there there are a few other angles supposedly that show that there wasn’t any contact, but from that vantage point, he sees Will’s helmet lowered a little bit and he’s going to call it. Will’s trying to get his helmet up out of it there. You like he’s trying to do the right thing. Um, this has been interesting to watch for me this year, and I’ve seen this over the last couple years. It’s that this generation of players, you got to remember they grew up when helmetto helmet contact was being officiated. Like I grew up in an era where we would lower our heads because we were trying to get as marks as many marks on our helmet as possible because it looked badass. You wanted to have much as much paint on your helmet. That’s how stupid we were. So, uh, like this generation of players, they’ve learned to avoid helmetto helmet contact, but in doing so, they’ve become incredible organ harvesters. They they they know how to hit guys hard legally in the midsection. This Texans defense does a really good job of it. And by and large for most of the season, the pass rushers have done a good job of keeping their head out of contact, not drawing penalties on plays where five, six, seven years ago they might have. So, I’m not overly worried about it. The Chiefs have not gotten the benefit of the doubt in a lot of the calls that I’ve seen this year. Um it’s just that they are like it’s it’s still the Chiefs in Kansas City. There’s still bad officiating crews whether last week like whether you’re a Colts fan or a Texans fan. That was a poorly officiated game. That was the same officials crew as the Chiefs game from last year. So, I I do feel better about that. And I do think the Texans pass rush is better equipped for a contain rush. The downfield stuff, what what Chris Long was talking about there when he said, you know, they can play off they can play man uh coverage from off alignments. This is this is very much when they’re playing match coverage. We’ve talked about this before. You’re starting off, it looks like zone, but as you recognize the route patterns, then you pick your guy up and turns into man coverage. It does give them ability to jump routes. It gives them ability to be really opportunistic. And Pat Mahomes is going to be operating in a world where he might not have three of his starting offensive linemen. I think right now FanDuel has it. I just checked FanDuel right before I came on and the Chiefs are still minus three and a half even with the news that Josh Simmons is out. I I would hammer that just as I told you last week that I would hammer the Texans over the Colts while the Colts were favored. This is a banged up still still very solid Chiefs team, but they’ve lost the mystique of old. This is uh Daniel Jeremiah on the importance of being physical in this environment this year where the league just has so much parody and lack of clarity as to who the truly dominant teams are. The physical teams are starting to climb. Like I don’t know anybody wants to see the Houston Texans uh right now with how physical they’re playing. Nobody. You know who wants to see him? Daniel Jeremiah. You know who’s not intimidated? We’re going to try to tickle your tonsils on every every play every game. You know, that’s a Look, look, I got to tell you, if you’re trying to seduce me, Andy, not working. Not working. You’re going to need uh you’re going to need a lot more than that and maybe like two- fifths of whiskey. My god, what a weirdo.

Former Houston Texans defensive lineman Seth Payne takes a look at just how impressively violent the Texans have been this year. Houston travels to Kansas City to take on the Chiefs for Texans vs Chiefs in Week 14 of the NFL season.