Given the way the Texans' offense is underperforming in recent weeks, there could be some difficult decisions to make about the coaching staff's future. Payne & Pendergast continue discussing the issues from Sunday night's loss to the Detroit Lions.
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00:00Gibbs in the backfield, Goff in the gun. Two receivers wide side right. Here's the snap to
00:04Goff. Looking, firing, tipped in the air and intercepted. Texans have it at the 35-yard line
00:11of Detroit. Jimmy Ward off the carom with the pick. Jimmy Ward, Petrie with the tip.
00:19They work on it daily and Jimmy Ward with the scoop and the interception. The Texans are set up
00:28in great field position to operate their first offensive series here. Goff's first interception.
00:37That was Jimmy Ward with the interception early in the game. That was your five-hour energy,
00:42high energy play of the game. Five-hour energy, the official energy shot of Sports Radio 610
00:48and football superfans. I'm going to steal one of those five-hour energies, I'll tell you what.
00:53I think they're there if you're watching on YouTube and Twitch. I don't know, Seth,
00:57I think they're there just for... Oh, they're empty. Oh, they know me too well. Are they really?
01:02My wife does the same thing with the whiskey. She definitely did last night. I'm like a teenager.
01:09Brandy, where's the liquor cabinet key? What are you doing? I'm out. You needed it last night,
01:14man. No, she's got the werewolf instructions. No matter what I say, don't give me the whiskey,
01:19Brandy. All right, look, that was a high point. I thought Jalen Petrie, man,
01:24that play where Jalen Petrie tipped that ball, the beautiful thing about it was that he had
01:28the awareness and had realized he had sniffed out the play. He wasn't zeroing in on the quarterback,
01:35he was getting in the passing lane. He just headed straight upfield and got his hands in
01:38the passing lane. That was beautiful. That was a veteran-savvy move there by Jalen Petrie.
01:45Boy, it was a sign of glorious things to come. Those were good times, yeah, early in the game.
01:49There were a lot of things they needed to do to win this game. They'd check the box,
01:52but one of the things I have as my keys to the game- Touchdown, Sean? Are you being greedy,
02:00or did you just want points? No, I just wanted to score just points. Oh, you wanted points of
02:02some sort? Yeah, just points. I know they're going to need time to score touchdowns in the
02:06second half. One of my keys to the game was scoring a point in the second half of the game.
02:11They weren't able to do that. Look, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you do have
02:16your cake, Titus Howard's going to try to grab it from you. Oh, will he? He'll be like, give me that
02:19cake. And then it'll fall on the ground and he'll jump on it and eat it off the floor. Notoriously
02:23around the cafeteria there, or the sports super duper nutrition plasma center, whatever they call
02:30it. Yeah. Walking around in lab coats up in there. So those offensive linemen can get their glorious
02:35physiques and strip the ball. This is what I'm, I'm more upset. I am more upset. Not just the
02:41tight. Did I already say this or not? I thought there's people getting in their cars. Titus
02:45Howard. Okay. Yes. He went to strip the ball, but why was it so hard for him to strip it? Well,
02:51you're a big man. You're 325 pounds. And it was like, it wasn't even a, it was a battle for me.
02:57He had to battle that ball. Honestly, I don't, I don't want to get too late to be fair. I don't,
03:02he wasn't trying to strip it. He was trying to take it away and then go do something with it.
03:05You know what I mean? Like CJ wasn't trying to give it to him. I know Titus is, you know,
03:11Titus is a guy who likes to take things into his own hands. It should have been like stabbing Caesar.
03:15It should have been easy because I guess Stroud was Caesar. He didn't know it was coming. He was
03:21like, Hey Brutus, how you doing? How's the wife? Same thing. That's what happened to CJ. You know
03:29what CJ was yesterday before we play some more of this audio. I realized what it was and why he's
03:35starting to self in his, how comfortable or uncomfortable he is. Some of the decision
03:41making, those were bad interceptions yesterday. He's in a toxic relationship and he's doing it.
03:46He's been in a toxic relationship with the rest of his offense, the offensive line in particular.
03:51And do you know what it's like when you're in a bad relationship with somebody like at work or
03:54somewhere else, like somebody who's just brutal to have a discussion with, like even you're not
03:59trying to argue, but you offer a suggestion and they're like, that's dumb. What happens after a
04:03while? You just, you kind of just start shutting down and you're like, I know I should say something,
04:08but, uh, so, um, I'm not talking about how he responds verbally. I'm talking in his play. He's
04:12just, he's walking on eggshells trying to figure out what's the right thing to do. You know, that
04:17person that's always, he's in a toxic relationship. That offensive line might as well be the person,
04:23you know, that takes everything as a criticism. You're like, Oh, I want to compliment his haircut,
04:27but I'm afraid he's going to think I'm being passive aggressive and you end up not being
04:31yourself around that person. He's not himself around these other people because they are toxic
04:36football players. He's not been himself since he hit Niko Collins with that bomb in the Buffalo
04:41game for being honest. You know, when was that? That was week five. Yeah, it was week five.
04:46Sure. It wasn't 2021. It was week five. It was like 6 and 4 and leading the division.
04:52This question was asked of D'Amico Ryan's last night. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on
04:56this Seth, because I have been adamant. I thought last year that the, this team's inability to put
05:03teams away in games that are very put away able was an issue. But this is where we're learning the,
05:09the, the, the, how expectations fuel things. Yeah. The Texans were six and
05:15four last year, six and four this year, but last year there were no expectations.
05:20It was a honeymoon year. They won three in a row to get to six and four and everybody's all happy
05:25and joyous and, and, and things are great this year. There's six and four and everything is
05:30caving in on this team right now. D'Amico was asked, is the winning ugly? And when is a win,
05:37you know, Hey, when's a win? We hear that a lot. Is that approach backfiring,
05:41backfiring when it comes to putting teams away? And the approach each week is to go win the game,
05:46no matter how it looks, you know, we don't set out to win an ugly game, but in this league,
05:51every game comes down to, you call that final possession. So you have to find a way to gut
05:57those out and win. We haven't been on the winning side, you know, of those games as you know,
06:03green Bay, New York, and now Detroit. So we didn't make the plays to win the game.
06:09Like however you win, you got to find a way and to play to win games. You got to have
06:15guys have to step up and make plays and that's not happening. I, I hate that plays that it's
06:22predetermined. I hate, I hate the answer, the mentality, the false observation, if nothing
06:33else, it's not true. All games don't come down to the last couple of plays. And sometimes I feel
06:39like when you have a coach that, that, that looks at the late Bill O'Brien was a lie. It's an eight
06:44and eight league. And what happened? You finished nine and seven every year. You know what I mean?
06:47Like you, I think you, you can talk bad things into existence. Sometimes games are going to come
06:53down to the wire in the fourth dolly when you're up by, by, by 20, hit the half. Maybe I'm making
07:00too much. I've never been in an NFL locker room, so maybe I'm making too much of it. Look to me,
07:04D'Amico, Hey, he has more football knowledge in his little finger than I have in my entire body.
07:09So like, I, so I'm just making an observation from a human standpoint, when you have leadership
07:15that is saying, and I don't know what gets said behind the scenes, I admit that as well.
07:18I'm just telling you what feels like it said, and we get beaten over the head with every week is
07:22like, Oh boy, these games come down to the last play. And it's always a play here and a play.
07:26It doesn't have to be, this is the problem. Like I don't, yeah. Whether the mindset leads to that
07:30kind of outcome or not, the whole thing is it's not like they were comfortable or trying to win
07:36close games. So the question, the way it was phrased was something along the lines of like,
07:40did you get too comfortable with winning close games? I, I think winning those close games that
07:45they did was more of a, it was a reflection of where their flaws as a football team were.
07:52And it was something that was going to get exposed if they didn't fix it. That's why we kept saying,
07:57okay, they got to clean this up. They got to clean this up before they get to the really
08:00good teams. They got to clean this up. And none of it's gotten cleaned up and some of it's gotten
08:05worse. I'm not, by the way, I'm not like exasperated with you that I'm holding my head.
08:08I've just got to know where this team has given me a headache. I never get headaches. Now I've
08:12got a headache. Thanks a lot for the tumor. You and I make an agreement right now. None
08:15of what's happening in the next hour and a half is, is on you. Like you're not making me mad and
08:21I'm not making you okay. Gotcha. We got, yeah. Let's not let our toxic relationship with the
08:27Texans ruin our relationship as it is. I'm bringing my stress home with me. Oh my God,
08:32Sean, I got to tell you exactly. I kicked you because I can't, although I did, I'd probably
08:38make it. I'd make that field goal. Oh yeah. I'd kick Titus Howard right through the goalposts
08:42and he would go end over end and he would just scrape the inside of it. That's the brush of
08:46the inner thigh crowd. That's what the lions, that lion's kicker, the kid from Tom ball.
08:53He was like, he was slowly and quietly seducing our goalposts by touching its inner thighs.
08:59Let's focus. So D'Amico with these close games turned on, I know, but D'Amico with the clue,
09:04you were making a point before it was just, it wasn't a mindset that they were trying to win
09:08close games. It was evidence that they just weren't a complete football team. Yes. That,
09:13that you got, you squeak some teams, some games where you really based on the physical battles
09:21should have won by 21 points. You were just squeaking them out. It was an indication that,
09:25yeah, look, there was a canary in the coal mine for these things will jump up and bite you.
09:30And mind you, cause I see a lot of people, or at least some people have told me already,
09:36just like, Hey, you got to remember it was the lions. They're a really good team. And you played
09:40them down to the wire. If they had genuinely played them down to the wire. Yes. A hundred
09:45percent. They did not. They squandered a 23 to seven lead, right? They slowly and surely watched
09:53the life be compressed out of them. As the lions stood on their chest in the second half,
09:58not all 26, 23 losses on a last second field goal are the same, right? You know what I mean?
10:04Just kind of fair Baron. What a turn of events where in the first six games of the season,
10:08if I would have found, I, I would have said, yeah, I kick it from 65. Let's end this thing.
10:13Not so much anymore. Yeah. But I get what you're saying. Like the, the one,
10:18the one they needed to have, he duck hooked that thing into the third row.
10:21That was a, we knew that I knew it was bad off his foot. Yeah. Right, right, right. It was,
10:25it was bad right away. Here was CJ Stroud last night. He was asked how long does it
10:30take to flush a loss like this? I'm not sure, you know, it was hard, hard, you know, to lose like
10:38that, especially when our defense plays so good. And, you know, we just really, we're just not
10:46scoring points at the end of the day. So yeah. It's not easy, but you know, can't sit here and,
10:53you know, keep our heads down. I got to keep our heads up and go back to work and get better. So
10:57yeah, that'd be the plan. I don't know if you, if you watched or listened to the whole CJ press
11:02con that was as down as he's been in a press conference since he became a Houston Texan last
11:06night, a lot of short answers. Yeah. You know, it didn't look like he was having fun. No. You know,
11:12the, one of the things they had talked about with their little mini bi-week in the two hour
11:16players leadership council meeting and everything, got to get back to having fun. Yeah. We just,
11:21I was on a leadership council once that told Tom Coughlin, we thought he had to have more fun.
11:26Didn't go, didn't go so hot. Didn't go so hot for that leadership council.
11:32I have fun when we win football games. That's my fun. And now they've turned me into Tom Coughlin.
11:38You know, what's fun. The grumpiest version of Tom Coughlin. You know what, CJ, you know,
11:43it's fun winning and not having your offensive lineman strip the ball away from you. That's fun.
11:49Do you remember who had to be the one to deliver that news to him?
11:53It might've been ironically enough. Now lions, correct coach Mark Brunel. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay.
12:00No, we had a, we had like, there were like seven or eight of us and we just met with Coughlin and,
12:06and he took it well, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he actually like,
12:09we had some points for him. It was, it was a little, it was more involved than just,
12:14um, I think for me, one of the things that is the, is most disturbing, depressing, whatever,
12:22whatever adjective you want to use is that, um, when you combine what the Texans are doing right
12:28now with the rest of the AFC South, all of which lost yesterday in a season where we were,
12:34I don't want to say promised anything. The Texans didn't come out and say, Hey,
12:37we traded for Stefan digs and we signed a Neil Hunter and we got Joe Mixon.
12:40We are going to be a Superbowl team. Right. But I, but I think expectations were that it was going
12:45to be more than what they were like. They made all these moves to improve over what they were
12:49last year, which was AFC South champs, won a playoff game, knocked out in the first round.
12:55There's seven games left in the season. And I can already tell you how this season is going to go.
12:59They're going to win 10 games. They're going to win the AFC South. They might win a playoff game
13:05and then they're going to get blown out on the road. If they win a playoff game,
13:08they're going to get blown out on the road in the second round.
13:10They win a playoff game, uh, at home at 3 PM on a Saturday. Yes. Which most assuredly will be
13:16undoubtedly right. But this version of the Texans and that's depressing. And the other big question
13:22is okay. Then Bobby Slowick and what is his, what is his future? If he doesn't turn this around and
13:27fix it now, Niko Collins coming back, we'll make a difference. Like all of a sudden coaches
13:33magically become better play college. Yeah. And I don't think they're ill. And it wasn't like
13:40they were, it wasn't like they were an, a machine when Niko was healthy either.
13:45Um, so yeah, I it's, there's going to be a hard decision if it's not made during the regular
13:51season, but in the off season where this might be the year where D'Amico really becomes a genuine
13:55head coach, when you fire one of your friends, uh, because I don't know if this doesn't get fixed.
14:00I mean, they're just so hopelessly inept. They just can't put a complete game together. And I
14:05don't care. Like we said, there's other, many other teams don't have Niko Collins on their
14:09roster right now. Many other bad football teams have scored touchdowns in the second half in the
14:14last four games. And the Texans can't score a touchdown, much less even a point last night.
14:19But in the last four weeks, they haven't scored a touchdown. It's unacceptable and inexcusable.
14:23And he should get fired. If this keeps going on, I mean, it's just, that's,
14:27that's not even a hot take like four straight weeks without a touchdown. And you have CJ
14:30Stroud as your quarterback, right? It doesn't mean a hot take becomes retaining Bobby.
14:34So that would be the hot take well put well put.