Under the Radar player to watch...and 'Dre HOF | Texans In the Lab

Drew Dougherty of Texans TV and Team Analyst/Radio Sideline Reporter John Harris recapped the Colts loss, pinpointed the under-the-radar Texan to watch at Jacksonville, and discussed Andre Johnson going back on the ballot for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
In the Lab, a Texans podcast that takes a different
look at things to Doherty and John Harris have their
lab coats and goggles on and the Bunsen burners burning.
Here's Drew in the Lab.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Time right now. Drew Doherty, John Harris, Good to see
my friend. Good to be with you, my friend. How
are you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Man?

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Wish Sunday would have gone a little bit better, But
there are some good things from Sunday and obviously some
things that have got to be worked one very quickly.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yes, today on the podcast, we're going to cover those
good things and we're gonna do the Cream of the Croppers.
Plus we're gonna get ready for Jacksonville, gonna have Under
the Radar guy, and then we're gonna wrap things up
with number eighty because the Hall of Fame announced today,
the Pro Football Hall of Fame that there's a whole

(00:51):
bunch of new candidates and our guy Andre is once
again among those people. But let's start with what we
saw on Sunday. Lots of stuff that didn't go right. Defensively,
you get behind in a whole fourteen zip and you
play well after that, but not well enough. It's funny
my two boys and my daughter came with my wife

(01:12):
to the game and they got stuck in traffic, and
basically they got in and it was fourteen to nothing,
and as their butts were hitting the seats, Nico Collins
was pulling in that touchdown from CJ. Stroud, And they
said that night at dinner, they're like, Texans looked pretty good.
I mean they saw they saw was like a twenty
to seventeen game. And I was like, yeah, technically, you're right,

(01:32):
but that's not how the things work. So get behind early.
But let's talk about your cream of the crop guy
the crop. Thank you, macho man. Who is your one
cream of the crop player from Sunday the crop?

Speaker 3 (01:48):
I mean, if you I think both of us we
had to pick one, you can pick just one. I
think it'd be very easy to pick CJ. Stroud, sure
through a playing through his shoulder situation, m I think
he was absolutely fantastic. But I'll leave you for c J. Stroud.
Or I could take CJ. Stroud and you could take
the other guy. Because I think there were two guys

(02:11):
that really stood out. I think you could add another
two to that mix. I think there were four. It's
kind of like the twenty twenty four NFL Draft, Drew
I said, all along, I felt like there are four
players in the twenty twenty four NFL Draft, every elite
Texas at but two of them seton Anderson. The other
two were Jaalen Carter and Bryce Young.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Okay, so I kind of feel like there was By
the way, that was the twenty three you got me
really intrigued. I was like, oh, who does Johnny have
as his top four for twenty four?

Speaker 3 (02:37):
But that's not I've got a number one. I've got
Kayleb Williams a number quarterback. I have Marvin Harrison junior
wide receiver High State. Number three, I have Drake May
quarterback North Carolina. And at number four, I don't my
recent one. This would be if I re edited it
Olu fashion U from penn State to left tackle. Those

(02:59):
would be my So I'm already getting deep into woods.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
So we're getting and we're getting tangential here, But where's
my guy? Michael Pennock's the left e QB up in
Washington rank Andre will I.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Think I've got him in the like in the top
forty right now, but the way he's been playing that
probably he'll be bumping up. Here's the thing. There are
a lot of quarterbacks that are bumping up, like way up,
and that's gonna make this draft very very interesting depending
on who comes out. I mean, I've done put the
film on bro on my YouTube page at JAGE Football
Takeover for when you were Caleb Williams, Drake May, Joe Milton,

(03:36):
Jayden Daniels just did one this week for ushoot and
I mean they were all fantastic in their particular way.
So you can check all that out. But that's to
look ahead. The Texas have their quarterback now. Yeah, they
have their guy now. I think that's one of the
things that was cemented. You and I have talked about this,
and you know, you know I've been talking about c J.
Stropp because they're always talking about it's Bruce Younger bust.

(03:58):
And there were a lot of people that felt that
way when we got to the draft, and I said, look,
you know, especially you know with that whole Colts, you know,
ending of last year, I said, look, CJ. Stroud is
right there, and he showed us a lot of things
and I thought Sunday he showed a lot of toughness,
he showed leadership. He showed a lot of things we
were looking for. But as three pass catchers, you could
put in that group too. Man, they were they were

(04:18):
absolutely fantastic. But I you know, I'll give you one
play to me that really it was one of those.
When I saw it, I like really like, yeah, that
dog head turned, you know when a dog Here's something
kind of weird. There's a third down play and then
snap was low from Jared Patterson to c J Stroud.
In fact, the ball end up on the ground so
CJ wasn't able to corral it because it was low.
So he started into his drop and the and the

(04:40):
ball hits his hands right down near the ground and
then it sits on the ground for a second, so
CJ's got to collect himself, reaches down, picks up the ball,
and without missing the beat, throws a dart on a
slant rot to Robert Woods for first down. And I
just remember in Mark and Andre's ears, I I said
something like are you kidding me? Like wow, Like that's man,

(05:06):
you talk about a quick release and just everything you
want to see the court. I mean, taking a play
that was just gonna be a dud, he turns it
into a first down, I'm like, Wow. So he's shown
even probably beyond where I thought he would be at
this point, and I was one of the highest people
on him coming into this draft. I think he's really
shown that he is that guy. And I think what

(05:28):
he's ready for now is to be that guy to
walk in the huddle. And it's not not that he's
a timid rookie, but you're not a rookie anymore. You
are the leader of that offense. Right, it goes through you.
What you said goes no matter what. And I feel
like even through after just two games, I feel like
that's where we are with CJ. Well.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
The book on him as a Texan has been Okay,
he'll do something in practice, or he'll do something in
a preseason game, or we'll do something now in a game,
and he'll correct what needs to be corrected the next
time around. So what did he what did he need
to do better? After Week one? Needed to help get
the offense operating a little bit more smoothly, and listen,

(06:09):
rookie signal caller, rookie offensive coordinator, rookie center, lots of guy,
lots of thing on the road, lots of stuff working
against him. It could have gone better, sure, but it's
not like the end of the world. It wasn't a
disaster in that regard. It wasn't good, but it wasn't
a disaster.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
What did he do?

Speaker 2 (06:24):
He fixed that. Now they got to get in the
end zone a little bit more often. And he'll be
the first to tell you that he's he wasn't easy
on himself in the post game. He was saying, hey,
he was taking the leadership, taking the onus, like I
should have done more. But goodness gracious, his stuff gets
corrected the next time out, and he looked pretty darn
good this time out. So what gets better in week three?

(06:46):
What gets better from week three to week four and
so on and so forth. It's really fascinating and really
fun to think about, Like what he just keeps getting
better each game and improving on things. And I love
your idea about those three pass Did you say you
go with CJ? And that's a that's a fine choice.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Everybody else at the table, how about that?

Speaker 2 (07:05):
I love it. I'm gonna naturally go with the I'll
go with all three of those guys, because what did
we hear over and over and over again, And I
thought justifiably so, But what do we hear all off season,
long after the draft. Well, it's gonna be a lot
of Damian Pierce and a lot of Dalton Schultz, and
maybe if you get something from some of these receivers
every once in a while, that'll be cool. Well, Damian Pearson,

(07:27):
the run game have not been what they'd like to be.
And Dalton Schultz, he's caught some passes. But CJ has
been feeding Robert Woods consistently. CJ has been feeding Nico
Collins consistently. He targeted Tank Dell four times last week.
Tank Dell had the most targets with ten. On Sunday,
he had seven receptions that tied Collins for most catches

(07:48):
on the team. Collins, though, did some damage after the catch,
and Tank did to a degree, But think about it,
seven catches for Nico Collins. His last catch of the
day was a nine yarder, weren't His catch of the
day was an eight yard touchdown catch, which that that
throw and catch was a beauty. After that, it was
like thirty two, twenty eight, twenty eight, twenty five and

(08:09):
twenty and then he also had like what a twenty
eight yarder pulled off the board because of an illegal formation.
He was doing some of it himself on short stuff,
meaning Nico Collins was, you know, doing a nice catch
and run and playing with violence, might I add, but
a lot of it was deep stuff too from CJ Stroud.
C J Stroud two Robert Woods going deep. I mean

(08:30):
CJ had all ten of the most explosive plays there
were sixteen yards or longer. They were all passes, and
seven of them I think were twenty yards or more
because you mix in one to Woods and so and
so on and so forth. You know, there's been times
over the last three four years where the ten most
explosive plays for the Texans, like four or five of
them were runs, right, and the most explosive pass is

(08:52):
like a twenty yarder. I mean, he was doing it
over and over and over. And I know that's not
gonna happen necessarily every week, but goodness gracious, this is
sighting those three pass catchers and what they were able
to do and what they've been showing they've been able
to do through two games. That's got me really really
excited because Dalton Schultz is going to get his He
Dount Schultz's gonna come along and be you know, the

(09:13):
focal point one week or another or more. But what
that little three headed monster can do so far, alike,
I like a lot.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
And I started seeing some stuff that I hadn't seen
before from the passing game. You know, the Robert Woods
uh near touchdown mm hm was a tremendous concept where
Tank went all the way to orbit motion, all the
eyes go to Tank, slant and Nico and Robert just
runs the wheel up the sideline. He's wide open. And

(09:43):
we talked to Robert about that on Monday and he
and we said, you know, did you realize how close
you were to make it at a touchdown? Did you
know you were out of bounds? He said, you know,
I knew as close. But you know, just the fact
that you know, Robert Woods did even get knocked over.
I mean, you know, if he just lands a little
bit more than the left, that's another that's another touchdown.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
So there were so many different off the board too.
And keep in mind that was an offensive line without
Titus Howard, without Juice Scruggs, without Scott Quessenberry, without Laramie Tunsel,
all guys you thought were gonna be starters. This year,
not in a lineup, and yeah, CJ took some sacks. Uh,

(10:23):
he got hit a few times, which I would like
to start minimizing those hits. And I think you mentioned it.
What are what more does he have to do?

Speaker 2 (10:30):
I was gonna say, I bet you those those numbers
go down in large part to him, in large part
to the line. But you know, I think he's gonna
find a way to correct those things too.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yes, absolutely, I think that's gonna be the next That's
the next point of emphasis, and that is you scan, bang, bang, bang,
not there, get out of dodge it, throw it away
one or the other. You know, NFL teams are good.
They see things on film and go oh, okay, didn't
do this. Well, let's let's let's write this down. In

(10:59):
the last couple weeks and Texans have had some some
blitzes with free runners on the quarterback and some of
that is because I don't enough guys. You know, they
bring six, you got five, and there have been times
where you thought they were bringing four off one end
and so you slew your protection and so they end
up dropping a couple there and bringing guys off the
other end. Somebody comes clean that I think comes with

(11:19):
not having all the experience in the line and guys
not playing together all the time, plus having a rookie quarterback.
There's some stuff he's seeing for the first time. For
as good as he has been, he's still seeing that stuff.
But for all those hits and everything, he's taken no interceptions,
knock on wood. There's almost a part of me that
hopes he throws one, just to kind of get that
off the schneid, if you will. But he's not throwing

(11:42):
he's not even throwing passes. You look at it and go,
that's close to an interception. So if he can continue
to take those strides, there's no telling what this offense
can be because once you get some of those starters
back on the old line, once you figure out what
you want your configuration to be, weak in and weak
out and see that. To me, Drew, that's been kind
of the the theme. Been a lot of themes the

(12:02):
last few years, but that, to me, has been one
of them. Has been The offensive line changes every week,
there's a new five, and a lot of that's injuries.
Some of that is it's very little of it has
been due to poor play. It's just been this guy's
been hurt. That guy's been hurt. Laramie missed a lot
of twenty twenty one, Titus missed the portion of twenty
twenty one. Then they're back in twenty twenty two. But

(12:24):
then some of the interior guys were kind of in
and out of the lineup last year. So it you
just want to get set on a five. Yeah, and
once you get that five and that five can start
working with CJ. You know, then those guys start to
understand where CJ sets up in the pocket, and that's
important for Titus and Laramie. You know, he sets up
a little deeper, does he set up a little shallower?
You know, that can determine what kind of set you

(12:47):
have out on the outside. So you've got to figure
all those things out. So everybody's kind of doing it
rope memory. And once you get to the rope memory stage, lookout,
look out. This could be really fun. And you know,
it's kind of nice to see some of the national
folks start saying, hey, you know, when the Texas are
getting knows O line like the things we just said,
some of the National people are going, hey, that might
be that might be a fun offense to watch. Yeah,

(13:08):
I think it very well. Could be. Everybody stays healthy
the outside, but then you get guys healthy on the inside. Gidea.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Okay, let's chitchat about Jacksonville taking on the Jaguars. They're
now one and one day. Hell, the Chiefs to only
seventeen points last week. Day only scored nine of their own,
which is kind of disappointing for them. So with all
that in mind, with what the Jaguars have on the table,
you're Texan, you're under the radar Textan you gotta lookout
for on Sunday. Who's it going to be for you?

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Well, I think this is. You could wrap this into
the most important Texan on Sunday, the one I'm watching,
the most focal point. It's Malik Collins. All right, Milik Collins,
and you could say the defensive interior, but just Malie
Collins in general. That guy can disrupt the game completely
and totally. But that was not what happened on Sunday.
From anybody up front, and the way this Jacksonville Jaguar

(13:59):
team can throw it, you need some pressure at Trevor
Lawrence's feet. The way it can run it, you've got
to be good in your fits. But to be good
in your fits, the guys up front can't be knocked
off the ball. They can't not get off double teams,
can't not get off blocks. There are so many things
that they've got to do. So I'm gonna say, Malik Collins,
he's faces Jacksonville team, you know, since he's been here
in twenty twenty one, so it's to be the fifth time.

(14:21):
And I know it's been a little different from twenty
one to twenty two, but there's gonna be a lot
of similarities from last year to this year. The defensive
line has got to take its play up to where
it was against Baltimore and put them in passing situations.
And now you're not facing Trevor, You're not facing Lamar Jackson.
You're facing Trevor Lawrence. T Trevor can move. So you
can't just be willy nilly going after a guy. But

(14:41):
it's not Lamar and it's the guy you've seen before,
and so you've got to frustrate him and make his
life as miserable as possible. And to me, got to
start with Millie Collins. I like it.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Milak is bound to do some big things. Hey, you know,
Texans won in Jacksonville last year. JAG's got the game here.
That was the first Jacksonville win against the Texans since
their last home win against the Texans, which was in
twenty seventeen. Remember, way way back in twenty ten, middle
of the season, you're tied up, closing moments of the ballgame,

(15:16):
You're at Jacksonville. They throw a Hail Mary. Our guy
Glover Quinn swats it down as he's been coached, but
it just happened to be swatted right into the arms
of Michael Thomas. He gets in the end zone. That's
a touchdown. Jaguars win. That one pushed them all time
I think, to a game better than the Texans in
the all time series. Since then, so we're talking middle

(15:36):
of twenty ten, they've won five games against Texans. They
swept in thirteen, they swept in seventeen, and they won
last year the final game. Texans have won every other
single game. They've dominated them. They're up I think fifteen
to twenty games now in the series. That's really remarkable.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
One of the guys who was responsible for a lot
of those wins was Andre Johnson. You know it, I
know it. Most of you listening to this know it.
But John, for the love of whoever, in five seconds
or more, excuse me in five seconds or less, why
does Andre Johnson belong in the Pro Football Hall of Fame?

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Because he was in a period of dominance, not playing
with the Peyton Manning and not take anything with the quarterbacks.
But he didn't play with the Peyton Manning or Eli
Manning or any of those kind of quarterbacks. Tom Brady.
He did it all for a franchise and everybody knew
he was getting a football and they still couldn't stop.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
I tried to talk as they could. Trust great that works.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
You know.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
You talk to anybody that played against him and played
with him certainly, and they all they scoff when you
ask the question. Of course, he belongs to all the
Pro Football Hall of Fame. So let's hope this happens.
It The vote will be Super Bowl weekend, so we
got a long ways. It's gonna be in February. But uh, yeah,
Andre belongs. You know what. I know it. Those of

(17:01):
you listening know it, and we will talk about that
a few more times in between now and then. But John,
it's always good to do in the lab with you,
and thank you for your time my friend.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yeah man, good time, Drew, thank you.