Is it possible the Texans just are not as good as they were hyped up to be this season? Payne and Pendergast discuss whether the expectations should change.
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00:00text message, five-hour energy fan line,
00:02morning boys, worst six and three team in the league.
00:06I think they're the only six and three team in the league,
00:09but I get what you're saying right now.
00:10There'll be more after this weekend.
00:12Shows that it's all luck so far.
00:14Why won't the OC open up the playbook to longer passes?
00:18All right, we'll put the OC question aside for a second.
00:20We've batted Bobby Slowick around plenty here
00:22over the last couple of segments.
00:24What is this team right now?
00:27What are the expectations for a team, Seth,
00:30that has spent the better part of the last month and a half
00:33in the top five or six of everybody's power rankings?
00:37And I think a lot of that is because the people
00:39that do these power rankings don't watch every snap
00:42of every game and the game flow with the Texans
00:45and maybe aren't in tune with the fact
00:46that they protect CJ Stroud abysmally.
00:50They don't score in the second half of football games.
00:54They've allowed teams to stay in the games
00:56with just silly mistakes.
00:57There's a sloppy team by and large.
00:59They are a sloppy six and three team
01:02and now everybody's seeing it
01:04on national television last night.
01:05So the Texans right now, and this is something
01:08that we've been pointing out pretty regularly
01:11that all right, it's not like their scoring margin
01:15is all that great.
01:16It's not like, we've been saying,
01:18they've been playing like a 500 team.
01:20So there's lots of 500 teams that are
01:25are plus five in the scoring margin.
01:29You look at the Falcons are five and three
01:31and they're minus, they're plus one in scoring margin.
01:35Right now the Texans are six and three,
01:37but they're plus one.
01:39They're a 500 football team, much like many
01:42of the other four and four teams in the league
01:44or like the five and three Falcons, right?
01:47They're not, they've been too high
01:49in some of the power rankings based on the way
01:51some of their games have gone against good opponents.
01:54And yes, they've got a nice win versus the Bills,
01:56but that was with the Bills without their best receiver
01:58at the time and before Amari Cooper.
02:00They're not the same team as the Bills.
02:02They're not, and I get what you're doing with the comps
02:04to some of those other teams right there.
02:05I think for purposes of what we were all hoping
02:08the Texans would be this year.
02:09And again, to the point of where I think
02:11some national pundits think they are, but they may not be.
02:15The teams that they are around the same part
02:17of the standings in the AFC right now,
02:19the Bills are six and two
02:22and they're scoring differentials plus 84.
02:25This-
02:26Is that more than one?
02:27I'm not a mathematician, Sean.
02:28It's 84 times the amount that plus one is, yes.
02:32They're 8,400% better than the Texans.
02:35Something like that, yes, yes.
02:37Or is that 840%, they're 840%, no, it's 8,400%.
02:40No, it's a lot, yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot of zeros.
02:43The Steelers are six and two,
02:45like the Texans were this time yesterday.
02:48They are plus 68 and that's with bad,
02:51mediocre, not bad, but mediocre quarterback play
02:54for most of the year, they're plus 68.
02:56The Baltimore Ravens, who are five and three
02:58and play the Texans on Christmas day,
03:00they're plus 33 and that's at five and three right now.
03:03The Texans are plus one.
03:06I mean, I get all the celebrating, hey, win's a win.
03:09And if you win by three and you win by 20,
03:11it's the same thing.
03:12And it is, in the standings, it's the same thing.
03:15But in terms of what your team is capable of accomplishing
03:19or what I care to predict,
03:21they're capable of accomplishing.
03:23Like, am I backing you right now with a Super Bowl bet
03:25at plus one scoring differential on a six and three team?
03:28Hell no, I'm not right now.
03:30No.
03:31Yeah, I can't do it, man.
03:32They're, I mean, the one thing that you just,
03:39that you can't look past is that,
03:42as we've said all year long,
03:44you don't need the advanced stats to tell you
03:45that they're a middling offense.
03:47They entered this week as the 14th scoring offense
03:51in the NFL.
03:52And yes, that was a good chunk without Nico Collins,
03:55but you still had Stefan Diggs.
03:56You still had Tank Dell, who last night showed
03:58that he's still very much a viable wide receiver.
04:01That's with Joe Mixon having multiple hundred yard games,
04:04but he missed a little bit of time.
04:05But this is, this game last night versus the Jets,
04:08I'm glad, you know what?
04:09I'm glad they had this versus the Jets, at least,
04:10if they had to get a really, really bad loss out of the way,
04:13because it was against a team that had won two games,
04:17against a team that had looked lost
04:19and disheveled last week.
04:20Not even last week, this week.
04:23This week, by the normal calendar.
04:27The first day of the week is Sunday.
04:29Yeah, I know it's a different NFL week,
04:33but it was four days prior.
04:34They looked like they couldn't get out of their own way.
04:37And they came out, and in the second half,
04:38especially the Jets offense was surgical against you.
04:42In the second half, the Jets defense did,
04:46would expect from looking at their depth chart,
04:48but which they hadn't been doing previously,
04:50it was just a complete dismantling.
04:52So you can spare me the,
04:54well, they don't have Nico Collins or Stefan Diggs.
04:57Lots of teams don't have Nico Collins or Stefan Diggs,
04:59and those teams have put up better performances
05:01versus the freaking Jets.
05:03So I don't want to hear that.
05:05I don't want to hear that.
05:06I would have accepted that versus the Lions,
05:08but not against the Jets.
05:10Not against Aaron Rodgers,
05:11who had looked like the worst version of himself
05:13that we have ever seen
05:14since maybe the first year that he started.
05:16Like, no, I'm not in any mood for that.
05:18It was his worst half as a pro in the first half
05:22of that game.
05:22Like, threw for 32 yards, I want to say.
05:24I've got, hang on, I got it right here.
05:25Aaron Rodgers at the half.
05:2635, I believe.
05:27It was 32.
05:28I'm looking at it.
05:29Oh, wow.
05:29He was seven of 14 for 32 yards
05:33in the first half of the game yesterday.
05:35So yeah, it was, look, right now,
05:38until we see otherwise with this offensive line,
05:41this Texans team is a version
05:44of what previous Texans teams have been at their peak,
05:47which is they're good enough to win the AFC South.
05:50They probably will win the AFC South.
05:52They still have three very, very winnable games
05:55inside the division,
05:57and they've got a couple other games on the schedule
05:59that are there for the taking if they play their A game.
06:04But the ceiling for this team right now,
06:06until we see the offensive line do otherwise,
06:08or until we see some substantive change
06:11with who's coaching the offensive line,
06:13or who's calling plays, or something,
06:15or see C.J. Stroud get back to normal,
06:17then this team is just a different version
06:20of the Bill O'Brien teams that won the division,
06:22the Gary Kubiak teams that won the division,
06:26playoff game, and then just bad enough
06:28to go get their teeth kicked in
06:29in the second round of the playoffs,
06:31just like they were last season.
06:33You know, and I think a lot of it, too,
06:34is when you look at some of the near wins
06:38early in the season, or the loss versus the Packers,
06:41which, hey, you could call that a quality loss
06:43or whatever you want on the road, I don't know,
06:45and they just got completely destroyed by the Vikings.
06:49Like, even the wins were marred by
06:54the thing that would come to roost last night,
06:56which is, oh, wow, you should have won by more,
06:59but, yeah, you keep shooting yourself in the foot,
07:02or you're just not playing well
07:03in crunch moments or what have you.
07:05This is more discouraging because they continue
07:08to do all those stupid things,
07:09but then they also just got physically destroyed
07:12in the second half.
07:13There's no, Titus Howard saying that
07:15they know they're the better team
07:16and they let this one slip away.
07:18What part of 30 minutes of football
07:20feels like slipping away to you?
07:21Not to mention, I'll say going into the first half
07:24for the offense, you said the Jets gift you,
07:28gift you a seven-point swing.
07:30They drop the ball, a rookie running back
07:33drops the ball three centimeters before the goal line,
07:37and you don't come out of that half
07:41with anything more than a one-score margin,
07:43and then you do nothing in the second half.
07:45For three games in a row, the offense hasn't scored
07:47a single touchdown in the second half.
07:50Again, plenty of teams in the league
07:52don't have Nico Collins or Stephon Diggs,
07:55but have managed to score a touchdown in the second half.
07:58You know, like, it's not a high bar
08:00we're even measuring them.
08:02That's not even Super Bowl contender stuff we're talking.
08:06Can you out-Nico Collins?
08:07Turns out, no.
08:08Not in the second half, you can't.
08:10Not in the second half.