Texans work overtime for 19-16 win over Cowboys
Fans can find little to love about underachieving team
Face it Texans fans. The Texans just aren’t that into you.
They can’t be. Not if they continue to treat you this way.
Sunday, before a national television audience, they offered several more hurtful hints, despite claiming a 19-16 overtime win over Dallas.
Nineteen, once so sweet, is just a reminder of happier times, hopes and dreams.
Remember your first date with the Texans, their inaugural game? That time they scored 19 points in a win over the Cowboys?
You both were so innocent
then. Was it love? Who knows, but it was pure, sweet.
I doubt you walked away from Sunday’s game, when they scored 19 points in a win over the Cowboys, with the same feeling.
In an NFL week when every other team in the AFC South lost, opening the door for the Texans to move to within a game of the division lead, the Texans once again showed up late for your date.
Yes, being in the “division race” five weeks into a season in which the Texans started 0-3 is a pure tease, but they could at least give you that, right? Well, they did. Barely.
The Texans are bad enough to be 0-5, and darn lucky they are 2-3.
As for them getting a win after doing all they could to throw away Sunday’s game? How ’bout them Cowboys?
The Texans were the better team by a wide margin in just about every statistical category except the final score.
DeAndre Hopkins’ acrobatic 49-yard sprint after hauling in a Deshaun Watson pass rescued the Texans from themselves on a night they should have coasted to victory before an announced crowd of 72,008, the largest in franchise history.
There were plenty supporters of America’s Team at NRG Stadium, but y’all were in there. Just as you have been for every game of this team’s history.
Happy. Hungry. Hopeful. And afterward?
Empty. Exasperated. Exhausted.
At least this week you weren’t enraged after the Texans walked away with a win on Ka’imi Fairbairn’s 36-yard field goal with 1:50 left in overtime.
Often, coach Bill O’Brien doesn’t seem to know what he is doing. His offense goes up and down the field like it is at practice. Then in the red zone — that tasty territory inside the opponent’s 20-yard line — it plays like a unit that has never practiced.
This was a game in which the Texans should have rolled. Watson threw for 375 yards, Hopkins had 151 yards receiving, the Texans held Dallas to 194 yards passing and the NFL’s leading rusher Ezekiel Elliott to 54 yards.
Entering the fourth quarter, Cowboys receivers had four catches for 28 yards, and Dak Prescott had 75 passing yards on two long catch-and-runs by tight ends the Texans decided not to cover, but 54 yards to everybody else.
Until late in the third period, Elliott had fewer rushing yards on more carries than Watson and Texans backup tailback Alfred Blue.
Yet, somehow, the game was tied at 13.
Why? Because the Texans aren’t that good.
Entering the game, only five NFL teams had scored fewer points on red-zone possessions than the Texans.
After being the first coach in the history of the NFL to run a shovel pass on a two-point conversion a couple of weeks ago, O’Brien accurately assessed that play call as horse(bleep) and vowed to improve.
After four trips inside the Cowboys’ 5-yard line Sunday resulted in three field goals and a turnover on downs, O’Brien was asked what goes into his thinking in red-zone play calling. He said he didn’t know.
Well, that is obvious.
The much-maligned Texans offensive line was better than it has been all season. Much of Watson’s running (10 carries for 40 yards) was by choice, as opposed to the previous few games when his scrambling was more of a life-saving measure.
He was in and out of pressure as needed, able to step into his throws or tuck-and-run when the opportunities were there. He hasn’t been that comfortable all season.
Watson completed 13 of his first 15 passes for 159 yards, but the Texans managed just 10 points in the first half, despite driving to the Cowboys’ end of the field on each of their four first-half possessions.
Fairbairn missed one field-goal try, then converted another after O’Brien made a curious — and by curious, I mean terrible — decision to not go for a fourth down inside the 2.
Well, perhaps that wasn’t as ridiculous a call as it seemed at the time, considering the play O’Brien pulled out of his hat the next time the Texans threatened to score.
With the Texans facing a fourth-and-goal a few inches from a touchdown, O’Brien put Watson in the shotgun and had him drop straight back to pass.
Unable to find an open receiver, Watson took off toward the end zone, but barely made it back to the 2-yard line.
The Cowboys celebrated heading to the locker room.
That wasn’t the last time the Texans would get inside the 2-yard line and fail to score.
But that’s how they treated their diehard fans on this night. In the end, though, they recovered to win.
But can you trust them? Do they make you happy?