DeMeco Ryans Recaps 49ers Victory & Previews Broncos | Texans All-Access

Houston Texans Head Coach DeMeco Ryans joins Marc Vandermeer and John Harris to recap the team's victory over the San Francisco 49ers and preview the upcoming matchup against the Denver Broncos. Coach Ryans discusses the defense's dominant performance, C.J. Stroud's development, injury updates, and building momentum as the season progresses.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Now times again to what happened. It's Texans Monday, presented
by Houston Methodist CJ.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Takes an e. It is over. The Houston Texans get.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
The job done in a big way, defeating the San
Francisco forty nine Ers twenty six fifteen.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
They had to have it, They got it.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
They played outstanding offense for much of the afternoon, and
the defense came up with the big stops when needed,
and Houston goes to three and four With Denver up
next week at home. The home stand starts with a band.
Absolutely had to have that game against the San Francisco
forty nine ers to have any kind of season that

(00:49):
you dreamed of having. I mean, you can always win
ten in a row or whatever if you lost yesterday,
but come on, you needed that game against the forty
nine ers. You needed it for a variety of reasons,
not just for your record, but to show, oh, you
can do it, you can beat a team that's good.
They were injury ridden, no doubt, but the Texans were
playing without Nico Collins and Christian Kirk, so I thought

(01:09):
that kind of canceled things out at least in that
matchup offense versus defense and you're able to pass protect
get CJ.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Stroud time he looked like the virtuos.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
So he is.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
And defensively, need I say more? Demigo Rans when he
left San Francisco had the number one defense in points
and yards. Right now he has the number one defense
in points and yards. It's that good on that side
of the football. And the Texans go to three and
four with Denver up on Sunday. And Denver just blasted
the Cowboys out of the building at Mile High yesterday,

(01:43):
so they're feeling fat and happy coming in here for
a nooner.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
And it's big, and it's on. We have a season.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yes it was zero and three, Yes, bad game at
Seattle Monday night, but here we go. This is the
time to make hay for your tech. With six home games,
four roadies, two of them in the Division and the
other two at Kansas City at the Chargers.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Let's go, Johnny, it is on. You've got a chance here.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
But the AFC good teams all over the place, at
least teams with good records. We'll see how it goes.
All you can do is take care of your business
starting Sunday. Good morning.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Well that's the thing. It's you know, we've talked about
this with the Titans and the Ravens, and in this
one it's you know, you play who's out on the
field like they're still wearing the Niners logos. You gotta
talk about the injuries. Look, the Niners played the Falcons
on Sunday night. Nobody was talking about how banged up
the Niners were. Is they beat the Falcons by ten

(02:41):
and beat them up. Yep, you know, nobody talked about, well,
you know, the forty nine ers don't have this guy
and that guy after Christian McCaffrey went off for like
two hundred plus total total offensive yards. So you play
what's in front of you, You play the team in
front of you, and you go out there and you
do what you have to do for that particular game
to win a game. And I know it funny. I

(03:03):
was as I was driving in was listening to Sean Seth,
and Sewan asked, I think a really good question is like,
how could you go fifteen days and prepare for a
team and play that way on Monday night and then
turn around after a short week and get it together
and play against another really good team, but play the
way you did yesterday and look, you try to hyperanalyze
it like that, you just forget about it.

Speaker 5 (03:25):
Man.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
There are just times where everything clicks, everything's right. You
get a few things to happen early in the game
that gets you rolling. I mean having games that we've
been to where like in twenty fifteen we played the Dolphins,
nothing goes right, We're down forty two to nothing.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
At the half, forty two to nothing.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Had we played the Dolphins later in the year, I
think it probably would have been us winning because we
got hot, we started to get a little bit of confidence,
et cetera. And I thought that wasn't even a great
Miami team get right, And so I think it's you know,
they're just things that happen in a season that you're like,
what the man. But we all knew as we watched
that Seattle game. As we were there in Seattle watching it,

(04:03):
we're like, Okay, Seattle's good, but we're not. We're not
helping the cause. Right, you could play a lot better.
You could play a lot better. And yesterday they started
getting hot and started getting things working. And I think
a game is about timing, too, about when when you
have to come up with a positive player, you have

(04:25):
to come up with a positive drive, can you? And
I asked a Miko and you will hear this interview
later after the game. He had some interesting things to say.
But I asked him about coming out of halftime and
I told him, I said, you know, at the halftime break,
I said, you know, you and I have been doing
this for three years. Coach, we meet at halftime. We
talked for about a minute and we go on and

(04:46):
I was like, I could feel the steam coming out
of your ears at the end of the half, and
he he kind of laughed at JA.

Speaker 6 (04:53):
Yeah, I did have some steam come out of my ears.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
And so to me, the drive coming out of the
half was huge because if they got it to sixteen
to seven, which they did, then they picked it off
and it ends the half. Now they got all kinds
of momentum, their red clad fans are going nuts. And
then what'd you do the first drive the second half?
Stuffed them, stuffed them three and out yep, stuffed them,

(05:18):
got the ball back, went down and kicked the field
going one up nine And that what I wasn't obviously
the end of the game, but it was a huge
turning point to me.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
No, no, you got the touchdown. Then right, No, hang
on a second, you got you didn't know. I think
you got the touchdown because look, third quarter, they punt
to you.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
I'm going over the drive chart here, and then that's
when you went, I'm sorry you went. That made it
twenty three to seven.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
That was the big ninety four yard drive. He threw
the ball to X for the score.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Again for the Prouce, but point the fact that that drive,
that three and out stop. They do a nice job
of piniony inside the ten, and yet you just come
out and slice him to death on a ninety four
yard drive. When have we seen that It's been more yards. Yeah, yeah,
it's been a while.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
When that happened, I thought, okay, you got at least
get a couple of first downs here, put them on
the lost. That's your defense can go to work, because
you mentioned that at the end of the first half,
not only did you have the special team's mistake where
they got the return of the fifty, you got the
face mask face. Now they have thirty five yard line
back bang, they're in the end zone and you're thinking,
oh my goodness. And then when the pick was thrown Leonor,

(06:32):
I I'm looking at Lenore because I got to look
at Lenoir. I can't look at the clock, but I'm thinking,
why doesn't he get out of bounds and set them
up for a long field goal or something. But it's
hard for him to probably watch the clock as well.
In his mind, he's thinking this is touchdown or bust
right here, because he as soon as he started dancing
around and doing the dipsy doodle, I thought, okay, clock's

(06:52):
running out. At least they dodged the bullet as far
as any more points on the board, because you're right
sixteen ten at the break and they get the ball right,
that would have been catastrophe. I mean, under the circumstances.
But you're able to keep the stiff arm. But Johnny,
let's go later on in the game when somehow, some
way it becomes a one score game. You're up eight,
and you need to have the drive, at least a

(07:14):
field goal drive, and that's what they got. They got
a long field goal drive out of it, and they
go up two scores. And it's exhaled a little bit
because you know the defense was eating but you just
didn't want to see the forty nine ers have any
life in a one score game late.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what you didn't want In all I.
All I was doing was flashing back four years because
when we played the Patriots when Mac was when Mac
was a rookie with the Patriots, we had a big
lead on them. Now we kind of created our own
situation in that one, but Mac brought them back. Yeah,

(07:48):
and I thought Max's the kind of got to be
able to do that. And I was worried about that,
and the defense just said, no, not on this day.
I think I saw this after the and I've always
liked Kyle Shanahan for the fact that he'll tell it
like it is right. He said this in that quote

(08:09):
after the game. They kicked our ass, and we've got
to take it like men and come back, hopefully a
little pissed off, and play better next week.

Speaker 6 (08:17):
They kicked our ass physically, and it's.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Kind of what happened to the Texans last week. We
get their butts kicked by Seattle. Came back and took
it like men and took it out of the forty
nine ers, and.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Just like us, we got it within a score. We
somehow stayed in the game. The Niners stayed in the game,
they somehow had it a one score game. It's twenty
three to fifteen. I'm like, god, dang it. And then,
like you said, went down kicked the field goal and
made it twenty six to fifteen. And now they've got
to have two scores. Everything works in your your favor.
They get a drive going, Kamari has the interception at

(08:49):
the one yard line. Years past, that would have been
games pass. I would have been really really worried about
having the Baltimoe yard line. In fact, you threw it
down to me. I'm like, okay, if you don't move it,
you gotta consider take the safety, all those things. And
then they moved it at least six or seven yards
to give Tommy Rude the punt. Yeah, and then they'll
and then stop them again. So uh, it was. It

(09:11):
was a full performance. I think there are so many,
so many players that you know, needed to step up.
We've we've been asked you and I I don't know
how many times were asked about Okay, well what about
the receivers of the Nico. What about the receivers of
the Nico. Well, all you gotta do is instead of
taking this long dissertation, about what they've got and what

(09:33):
the potential is. All you gotta do is point to
this and go here you go, yep, here you go.
I mean the number of catches X made yesterday. Jalen
Knowle is is here. He is here, and you know
exactly what I mean by that. He is here and
you cannot reduce the number of targets he gets. Jayden
Higgins is here, He's making plays. And I loved seeing

(09:56):
and I thought it was interesting that in CJ's conference,
his very first question he was asked and he talked
about the receivers. He started mentioning all of them, and
he got to Jared Wayne. Ironically, he forgot X, the
guy threw the touchdown too, but he mentioned Jared Wayne,
and he pointed out how Jared had his first two
catches of his career. He has never had a catch before,
and he had that big one going across the middle.

(10:17):
I think was on a third down catch, kind of
a rolling, kind of diving catch in the middle, which
is a hard case.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Says, Yes, he absolutely does.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
And his path. I mean, we saw it. We saw
it in preseason, like early in preseason in training camp,
the first two or three days, I Remember I interviewed
him after like the third day, and I'm like, dude,
keep it up, you're playing your guts out. The next
day he's hurt and now he has to go through this.
Well he goes, you know, they release him, an injury

(10:49):
settlement all that. Then they bring him back and they
put him on practice squad, and then you get an opportunity.
And look, I don't know, Jared Wayne might not catch
a ball the rest of the year, but the fact
that he was able to step in there yesterday when
when this offense needed receivers to step.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Up and big and CJ pointing him out, I thought
was I thought.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
It was really interesting. I thought it was really cool. Yeah,
he just missed X and he loves X. Two. No, no,
I know that. How about this?

Speaker 3 (11:12):
I wanted to see the Cyclones have five catches a piece.
It almost happened almostcause X had five, Nola had five,
Higgins had four. I wanted five to five five. Barrios
snuck in there with his five. How about that? Burrios
was good, He was really good.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Barrios was good.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
Woody's fifty yard catch and run, I mean everybody contributed. Johnny,
You look, I just listed all those guys with five
catches and you.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Have Woody and Higgins with four apiece. I want to
read Woodies read Woody stat receiving stat line real fast.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
All right, Woody marks four catches forty nine yards along
of fifty. Okay, so he loves gotcha behind the experimage. Yeah, okay, checkdowns.
It didn't always work. But the fifty yarder, Johnny, we're
so funny. The net is forty nine. So this will come.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Up with you know, my interview with the Miko, and
it came up yesterday with the interview or in the
press conference with the Miko talking about all the noise
and everything that I've been going on throughout the week,
and I think I think there's this there's a delineation
between noise in things that don't really matter versus hey,

(12:23):
we can see somebody miss a block, drop a pass,
see a team not play very well, you know, But
where it turns into noise is this team sucks. This
team should get rid of this guy. This guy should
be fired, everybody should be fired. That's that's there's a
difference between noise and people being able outside of the

(12:45):
building or outside of football being able to analyze what's happening.
So there's there's a difference in the two. But I
thought it was interesting, is it. You know, as you know,
people talked about the noise and getting past all of that,
and I thought Demico's answer was very.

Speaker 6 (13:03):
Was very pointed about that, like, hey.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
We can't take the opinions of people that aren't in
this building, which is absolutely true, because the noise is
the opinion part of it. The fact part of it
was he didn't play very well in Seattle, and that
was easy to see. We can see that, We definitely
can see that that's not the noise part. The noise
part comes in with all the opinions and all that,

(13:26):
and both CJ addressed it in the locker room and
Demico addressed it in his postgame press conference. But they
rose up when they needed to.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
It's what you do with it, because there's no way
to avoid it. Right now, we've talked about this. You know,
in the old days, you don't turn on the television
or the radio.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
How would you dare do that? Always? You don't have
to read, you don't read the newspaper. Right now, those
three things, if you didn't do those three things, you wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Even going on the internet and the o's okay fine,
or the early teens, but now that everything comes to
you and it pushed to you, no way to avoid it,
and it's going to find you.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
All these players, it's going to find them. So, hey,
did you hear what's such said about you? It's what
they do with it, it's what they do with it.
There's such public figures it's impossible to ignore. If you
have a phone, and if you have any kind of
social media participation whatsoever, you're just consuming. You're not posting,
You're just consuming because that's how you get your news.
That's how I read the freaking paper.

Speaker 5 (14:22):
You know.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
The equivalent of that today is reading x or you
know the other platforms as well. And that's what it is, okay.
Tamiko Ryans after the game talked about the week leading
up to it, the work that went into the win
over the San Francisco forty nine ers.

Speaker 7 (14:36):
And for this week, Kim, the main thing.

Speaker 8 (14:38):
Our guys just went out and everybody was I would
say locked in. Everybody had laser focus on their job
what we needed to do.

Speaker 7 (14:47):
Guys made the plays we were supposed to make.

Speaker 8 (14:50):
I thought CJ made great decisions with the football when
it wasn't there, checking the ball down to the backs.

Speaker 7 (14:56):
Our backs played well. We ran the ball for over
one hundred y'all.

Speaker 8 (15:00):
It starts up front always and when our offensive line
can do that control the line of scrimmags, things will go.

Speaker 7 (15:06):
Well for us. But overall could be more proud.

Speaker 8 (15:08):
Defensively, they also did an outstanding job getting great team
over there.

Speaker 7 (15:13):
Those guys made two really big plays on us.

Speaker 8 (15:16):
Kidlewin Jennis made some outstanding catches on us, and that happens.
But our guys were resilient. They continue to bounce back.
They didn't let one big play affect them. They were
still able to come out and continue to press forward,
play together and finish the game.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Along those lines of like, they didn't let one play,
you know, hurt them. And that was what those hell
of it catch by Jennings I was. I was upsets
thirty to seventeen and Max getting drilled by somebody. I
think you maybe will how do you get this off?
I think the defense has done that pretty well. They
haven't let one big play take them out of what

(15:55):
they do. Yeah, I think that's that's pretty I mean
that's almost one hundred percent With the defense, they don't
they do not let one play like, all right, they
got one, but you know come back like you know
Sting on the touchdown a JSN that he dunks. You know,
Sting probably should have had a little bit more help
from Jaylor Petrier on that. But I know that's a

(16:15):
play that was probably burning in Sting's mind. The rest
of it comes back later. It gets an interception when
the Texans absolutely needed it. The defense, I think, without question,
does that they do not let one play define them.
They do not let one play derail them. No, offensively,
it's been a little bit more that way, like you know,

(16:36):
we screwed up on this, and then that leads to this,
and then that leads to this. But there were not
a lot of instances yesterday where they even had the
quote unquote mess up on the first one they had
that one drive. I'm trying to think when it was
they did one drive that had a lot of promise.

Speaker 6 (16:53):
It might have been before the half. A lot of
that drive had a lot.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
Of promise, and then it was like a couple holdings
on one play and then I think there's a holding
on the next play and that back them up. So
they got themselves into that and that cost them, you know,
an opportunity for a touchdown.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
Scored on every possession other than that pick late in
the half.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Right, But they did they bounced back from from that,
but they didn't create those bad situations for themselves.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
That they did a much better job of on on Sunday.
And look, Nick Keyley took a lot of heat, a
lot of heat after Monday night's game, a lot. And
I'm sure as you you sit down with you know,
the offensive coaches and you're like, hey, what happening against Seattle?
I guarantee you a lot. I'm like, man, I don't know.

Speaker 6 (17:34):
Because that wasn't That wasn't us because.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
If you look at what they did against the Titans,
you look what they against the Ravens, and look, I
understand and this goes to Seth's point two. The matchups
were better in those two games, and the matchup was
good yesterday. The Seattle Seahawks are a tough matchup for
US right now because the Seahawks are that good up front,
they're that strong, gonna face girth up front. They're not

(17:57):
the last team you're gonna face, and the one you
face Sunday is to be a mother trucker. Right, They're
going to be tough.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
Thank you for your FCC approved.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, yes that they they're gonna they're gonna be tough.
But I think if this offense is okay, did we
find something if you take out of yesterday, you look
at it and go, what did we do yesterday that
we can carry forward, spread the ball around, gave gave
seven time to throw, and you ran the ball downhill.

(18:30):
Suddenly you didn't try and go wide. You went downhill.
You ran duo with some intentionality. You ran the ball hard.
And by the way, by the way, the most viral
moment that should come out of this game is British
Brooks putting Kevin Gibbons on his wallet on a wham block.

(18:51):
This is a defensive tackle. It is one of the
most impressive one on one blocks I have ever seen
from a full back. It's awesome, If not the best,
it is freaking awesome.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
It's probably gonna say, like ll cool Jay style, don't
call me a fullback.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Right, don't call me a full back.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
I'm a running back who happens to be able to
do a lot of different things and.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Whatever he is, British Brooks is giving this team a lot.
I saw him in the locker room. I was like, man,
you snatched that man's soul in British just he's like
he kind of chuckled it.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
There gonna show that in the meeting room today, the
whole room will go. That might be the only highlight,
like this is what we need right here. Bang, Okay,
go to work on Denver. That's it, right, that's only
has to show that moment. And he already got his
game ball. He was awesome. Yesterday, Sean said it might
have been the best game he ever played as a pro.
I mean, we get debate that all day long, but

(19:43):
under the circumstances, coming off the short week, the red
eye flight, the no Nico, no Kirk, let's get the
young guys involved and you spread the ball around like
that beautifully.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
I thought a huge.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Catch was first of all, opening drive of the game
for the Texans nine and a half minute, sixteen plays.
That's the longest drive of the year and it was
only for a field goal, but it set the tone
that we can move the ball. Yeah, we gotta finish
the drive, but we can move the ball. We can
consume clock, we can convert third downs.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
I'm on it today, folks.

Speaker 5 (20:14):
C J.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
Stroud and a huge play was a third down and
short and he hits Noel on the left side and
the throw was, I don't know, high, it was a
little high but catchable.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Obviously Noel caught it.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
But if Noel doesn't catch that ball, but Noel caught
that ball and the drive continued and it just that
to me was a really big play, my uscopic moment,
but a big play in this game because it continued
that drive, which was a tone center for the day,
and the defense was dealing and it was a beautiful
thing to watch against a team that's good. I don't

(20:49):
want to hear about injuries. They had George Kittle, they
had Christian McCaffrey was all world. And by the way,
how about this, You face Derrick Henry this year. You
shut him down. You face Christian mcackjeffrey, You shut him down.
Now some other guys you haven't been able to shut
down as well, but the Bucketeers, Yeah, ye, Bucky Irving,
but these guys and McCaffrey comes in all world, very

(21:12):
different kind of back than Derrick Henry. But both guys
are all world. You're able to stop them. What did
Henry do yesterday, by the way, against the Chicago Bears,
And know Lamar Jackson he had a ballgame. He had
a ballgame. The Bears couldn't do it. You could do it.
I have no issues with the defense. The offense had
a great performance yesterday. Now you're at home. Okay, let's

(21:32):
let's dig in here, protect the home turf, Denver Sunday
at noon, Let's hear from CJ. Stroud here talking about
the work that went into the week and what they
can do to build upon this victory against San Francisco.

Speaker 5 (21:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (21:47):
I think practicing, you know, that's key. You know, got
a practice great, and I think we've been doing that
for the last couple of weeks, and then you know,
taking it from the practice and put it on the
field like kind of like I was saying, just execution.
But yeah, I think that's what it starts, with your
preparation film, being on the same page with the coordinators
and with you know, your position coaches having conversation about

(22:07):
you know, if this happens, I'm gonna do this, that
happens with with your teammates. So that'll be key for
you know, this next game against a good Denver defense.

Speaker 3 (22:15):
Give me a little sliver here. How good is Denver good? Okay,
that's all I I mean. Offensively, if this were a
test in school, you'd have to show your work a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
And I'm going to, okay, and you do. I's going
to because I mike in front of my face, and
you know, I know they've got They've got two very
diverse backs both.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
The's a lot four touchdown passes yesterday.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Now you and I could throw four touchdown passes against
the defense that was forming known as the Cowboys.

Speaker 6 (22:45):
But that said, you're that fourth quarter they had.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Against the Giants has really kind of seemingly spurred them on.
The running backs are very good. The offensive line has
gotten better. They've got a number of weapons in the
past game, add in Evan Ingram, which thank god he's
in Denver not Jackson. So offensively, very diverse with what
they can do, very multiple. Defensively, they get after you,
they got a couple of they got a big time

(23:08):
shut down corner Riley Moss is good. On the other side,
they hit their physical They provide a little different structure
up front and Vance has got him going. Vance Josel defense.
I mean, he's got them going, and I mean there,
they've got confidence now. They think they can go beat
anybody anywhere, anytime. And so you're gonna have to do
the same exact thing. You're gonna have to hit them

(23:28):
in the mouth. But as we talked about Christian McCaffrey,
eleven touches yesterday for sixty eight yards, eleven for sixty
eight Sunday night against the Atlanta Falcons, he went over
to ten. Yeah, so the one thing I didn't and
I know that it was a talking point kind of
all year about live backers disease, and you know EJ.

(23:50):
Speeds added to the mix, and Henry and Christian et cetera.
You know, they don't cover well against the past. They
don't cover well against the past. Yesterday they covered really
well well against the pass. They covered really well man
a man against Christian McCaffrey. Henry had that great breakup
after the punt after the kickoff return right near the
end of the half. Yeah, Henry Aziz played his butt

(24:13):
off in coverage EJ. Speed in a couple of moments
where he was in coverage and and did some really
good things. The coverage from the linebackers can can change
things for this team and this defense going forward. The
fact that they're able to play that and they're gonna
eat you this week. R. J. Harvey and JK. Dobbins
they're bad dudes, man, They're really really, really good. Played

(24:35):
well off of one another. But they they'll include them
in the passing game too. But this this is gonna
be We said it for the last how many ever weeks.
We had to go to Baltimore and win. We did.
It was a statement game against Seattle. We didn't make
the greatest statement yesterday, even though it's a five and
two nine Ers team. It was like, you got to

(24:56):
show up and kick their ass, and you did. Now
you set up this game, this massive one against against Denver.
People want to crown Denver as, Oh they're gonna you know,
they're gonna be the AFC West winners. They're gonna be
that team you know this year. Okay, well, now you
got to tangle with us.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Were down nineteen nothing to the Giants at one point.
I know the Giants have talent, but obviously I have
trouble put.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
They lost one of those talented pieces just say with
a grew terrible.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
All right, let's get nd in here. We'll talk more
about this. The Denver broncos Andre is gonna join us.
We'll get McLean on as well. It is all happening here.
Following the Texans went over the forty nine ers with
Denver up Sunday at noon and Houston Methodist brings us
this show. Houston Methodist Orthopedics and Sports Medicine with treatment
centers all over the city, twenty convenient locations for you. You

(25:46):
have a nagging injury, something that concerns you, go check
them out. Houston Methodist dot org for more information on
Houston methdist or Orthopedics and sports Medicine. It's the official
healthcare provider of the Houston Texans. Houston methodis leading medicine.
It's Texans Monday.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
More Texans Monday is on the way. Now back to
Texans Monday.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
I'm first to ten Jones. Look at Jones throwing to
have field to his.

Speaker 10 (26:15):
Left and intercepted the Texans with the takeaways.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
The pick intendant for Jenniggs. Houston gets it done with
Kamari Lassiter with the I T all right, So when
we designed these h Town uniforms. Johnny, I saw them
PowerPoint stuff. I know exactly what you thought, and I thought, great,

(26:41):
I love these. These are awesome. But then I saw
them broadcasting in a game and I thought, oh, these
numbers are impossible.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
I mean they're really tough. They're really tough, especially you know.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
When you have noel you have a fourteen and a nineteen,
you know, and you're and things are on the fly.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
You want to get the call, right, Yeah, uh, that
one the last.

Speaker 4 (27:04):
I'm waiting.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
I'm waiting, please get up. Whoever picked this off so
you can see your number.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
And like I startedmor but I was yelling, I would
not hear you at all. It was loud. I couldn't.
It was loud. It was loud. Not hear you at all.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
On that I was like waiting. I was just waiting
for it. And it was fine, great, all got done.
But that's that's just a broadcaster thing right there. I
think who did the Christmas game on National on Netflix?
Because we wore these in the Christmas game. Somebody in
one of the nation man comment, but you know, it
is what it is. I would just like that white
line around the yeah, like on the color the old

(27:38):
blue color Rush was was nice, but these are badass looking, man,
So what are we two? And one of these now?
And one of these that's very nice, Okay, Andy Kalu
undefeated in life. Here he is joining us right now,
twelve year NFL veteran Texans legend.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
And by the way, he'll be with us tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
We're gonna be at the Texans Team Shop live at
six tomorrow and and he's gonna be which is awesome.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
It's Legends week.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
We're gonna put Janis McNair into the Ring of Honor
on Sunday and joining us tomorrow at six at the
team Shop. They'll stay open late. Brian Cushing will be there.
Brian freaking Cushing will be there tomorrow at six, So
you don't want to miss that. Looking forward to it,
and THENDY always looking forward to a conversation with you,
my friend. How did you see yesterday that performance against

(28:24):
the forty nine ers?

Speaker 11 (28:25):
Good morning, good morning, good morning, much needed performance. And look,
I don't care who the forty nine ers had out
the Texas. They were missing their number one wide receiver,
so let's just look at the score and the performance.
But that's the type of win That's the type of
performance I felt like the team needed after the Seattle debacle.
And what I really noticed big picture, you got it

(28:46):
from all three phases. You know, special teams obviously with
COMMI Fairbarn defense, you know, picking up the slack and
late in the game, getting that big interception to end
you know, to end the game. Then obviously offense without
me Collins, you had a bunch of different receivers stepping up.

Speaker 5 (29:03):
That was a true team win right there.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Indeed, as someone who played in the trenches, what is
it like in Kyle Shanahan had a great comment after
the game. He said, in short, they kicked our ass
and he didn't go further into the well, you know
physically this, physically that all that, But it felt like
yesterday was a physical ass kicking. As someone that did

(29:27):
play in the trenches, what is that like when the
game is over and you're like, we dominated them physically.

Speaker 11 (29:34):
No, it's such a great feeling, especially when the other
team has, you know, a Hall of Fame type player
and Christian McCaffrey. My thought going into the game, hey,
you're not going to stop Christian McCaffrey. You just want
to limit him and make sure there's anybody else that
has a big game to go along with it. They said, yeah,
hold my gatorade, you know, instead of hold my beer.
They said, oh, my gatorade is, and let me show

(29:54):
you what we could do against a guy like Christian McCaffrey.
And when you're stopping a player like that of that caliber,
it's not just him, it's because you're changing the line
of scrimmage, just because as soon as he gets the ball,
you know, when it's a handoff, you have guys in
his face because you're winning in the trenches, you're shedding
those blocks, and you're just dominating the guys in front
of you. You saw throughout the entire game, and this defense.

(30:15):
Say what you want about the Houston Texans defense. Every
single defense out there is gonna bend at some point,
but I mean they just continue to make big plays
after big plays and just dominate from start to finish.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Number one defense in the Yeah, but that was also
one of those deals, you know, where certain things went wrong,
and if the offense is picking up the slack a
little bit, maybe the defensive numbers look prettier, but who knows.
And it's a team game, and all of that and
speaking of team game and d the offense really put
on a show. I mean c J. Stroud looked phenomenal,

(30:51):
had time to throw. How did you see the attack,
especially considering no Nico Collins, no Christian Kirk.

Speaker 11 (30:58):
What I loved about it, there's somebody didn't watch the
game and they just checked the box score, the stat line.
There wasn't any eye popping stat except for the fact that,
oh man, so many guys had a reception, so many
guys were able to contribute. You know, I don't think
there was one hundred yard receiver. I don't think there was.

Speaker 5 (31:15):
A hund well, I know there wasn't one hundred yard rusher.

Speaker 11 (31:17):
But with Woody Marx, you know, averaging four yards of
pop and then getting another fifty yards receiving nice you know,
compliment to Woody marks Nick Chubb doing what he does,
just some nice tough run. Then obviously the receivers can't
say enough about those guys. It just it felt good
because especially with the wide receivers, when we were excited,

(31:38):
when I was excited during the preseason about all these
different receivers, you knew they weren't going to really get
a chance in the regular season. But because of the
way things worked out this you know this week with
Nico being out, Christian Kirk being out, you saw what
you expected from those guys and they all stepped up.
And that's impressive. That's impressive because now the defense you're

(31:59):
not just focused on one or two wide receivers. You know,
all these guys to make plays and that's just going
to open up your superstars even more when they're back
on the field and help me Anddy.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
I want to build on on that as a player
when you have when you're there, you're a defensive player
and you know the offense doesn't have Nico and you
know it doesn't have Christian Kirk and you're like, man,
we got these rookies, got Braxton Barrios. Do you get
charged up more as a teammate when you see the
guys that aren't normally the guys stepping up to make

(32:30):
plays like hey man, Jared Wayne, great catch first down?
Like does that fire you up more as a teammate
when it's guys you don't maybe get it from regularly
or don't expect to get it from regularly.

Speaker 11 (32:43):
And that goes When Wayne makes that play, it resonates
with the defense as well, because those are the guys
you see weekend and week out busting their tail on
scout team. Barely made the team, but you know that
given the chance, they can make a play. So when
guys like that make plays, you're just you're extra happy
for the man. That adrenaline continues to pump even a

(33:04):
little bit more when Nico Collins makes the players. But yeah,
that's what he does. You know, that's what Nico does.
But then when you see other guys who bust their
tail actually get an opportunity and they're able to make
a playoff Sunday, you're one hundred percent greade. It just
gets everybody fired up. And you've seen them before. You
and I have even talked about it during some of
the preseason games. When you see how the team reacts

(33:24):
to a you know, a guy that's not a household name,
when he has success, it just fires everybody up.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
What about confidence building a victory like this against a
good team. This team was five and two, tied for
first in the NFC West. We know how tough that
is coming into the game and doing it with whoever
is available or not available. They're really good at operating
with guys unavailable and mac Jones was playing pretty well
coming in, so you beat them soundly, decisively, however you

(33:51):
want to word it. How does that affect this team? Because, yeah,
the win over the Ravens was very nice. The Ravens
had a lot of guys out. They might be learning
how to play without several key players because they won
against the Bears yesterday with Huntley getting the start, and
obviously the win over the Titans was the Titans. But
now you got a really good one here. What does
that do for the team moving forward, especially Sunday against Denver.

Speaker 11 (34:14):
Indeed, no any any win, especially when the season hasn't
started the way you expect it. It just it gives
you that confidence. And look after the loss, if you
ask a player, they're all going to say, no, we're
still confident, we still believe. But you know, you're like, man,
we lost to this team. We played, we didn't play well.
But when you come in and you beat a team
that has a winning record, that has been playing well,

(34:35):
you hold them to their lowest point total of the season. Yeah,
you feel good about that, especially when you have this
beast known as the Denver Broncos coming to town. So
as a fan after the game, I'm all excited, like, man, yes, yes,
the Texas are back.

Speaker 5 (34:48):
Then I watched Denver against.

Speaker 11 (34:50):
Dallas and I'm like, oh uh oh, this is who's
coming to town. So that the players, though they're going
to be excited, they're going to be pumped knowing that
they just beat a good team and they're going to
face another good team next sun.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Yeah, another opportunity to make a statement. And I don't know,
things stick with me for whatever reason, but I remember
when we did the preseason game, the first one of
the year, and we're sitting down in production me trying
to figure out, you know, how we were going to
do the open and you know, I was going to
talk about offense, Indy was going to talk about defense,
and D point o, I want to talk about e J.

(35:20):
Speed And I thought okay, because we were gonna see EJ. Speed,
I was like, okay, oh this is cool. And then
Indy presented a case for e J. Speed got me
fired up. I was like, all right, EJ. Speed. We
had seen him a training camp. But indeed EJ. Speed
and these linebackers really have made a statement lately. And
I think the statement that they made yesterday was you

(35:41):
can criticize us for a lot of things, and you
have been criticized for covering past coverage, et cetera. Their
past coverage yesterday was really, really, really good. McCaffrey had
forty three yards receiving, but he did it with three
receptions on six targets. They held them to twenty five
yards rushing under his average at three point one, and

(36:03):
a lot of that had to do with the linebackers.
I'm not trying to shade the defensive line, which I
know you love, but EJ. Speed and these linebackers are
really doing something in coverage more so than what they've done.
What are your thoughts?

Speaker 11 (36:13):
No, No, no shade at all. And you know, starting
with EJ. Speed, you know the reason I brought him
up during that first preseason game and during our production meeting.
You know, while I was adamant about talking to EJ. Speed,
for whatever reason, I just felt like that signing was
so under the radar. People just didn't realize what type
of production, what type of playmaker he was with the

(36:34):
Indianapolis Coast and maybe the NFL, because when he was available,
I just assumed he was going to sign a multi year,
multi tens of millions of dollars because of what I
saw from him during when he was with the colt
So when he came to the Texans on a one
year proved type deal, I was pumped. I was excited,
and I was just wondering why there wasn't that much excitement.

(36:54):
But we're seeing now why I was so excited. And
here's the cool thing about it. You know, all these linebackers,
they love each other, They're gonna say great things about
one another. When he was brought into the mix, it
was a call to everybody to step up their game
because he's coming to compete for playing time. And you
see how much better they're all playing now, Like Henry Toatoa,
he had one play as a tackler where I was like, man,

(37:17):
that was a nice play. And then in coverage, I
thought Henry Totoa had a great play. And I just
see that his level has picked up. And I'm sure
it's because he knows there's a guy like EJ. Speed
breathing down his neck for reps, even though you do
see packages where they're in there together.

Speaker 5 (37:32):
So I just feel like EJ.

Speaker 11 (37:34):
Speed in that meeting room, in that linebacker room has
just elevated the play and you're starting to see it
not just with tackling, not just with physicality, but also
with the coverage, which was always a sore spot for
the Houston Texan linebackers.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
And did we talk a lot about the noise last week?
There was a ton of it, and there was a
lot of different reporting going on about guys in the
locker room and what's really going on and how do
people really feel? And you tell me being in a
locker room and what is really important here as far
as marching through a season and trying to keep everybody

(38:08):
on the same page, or let me add this to it,
is it almost impossible to keep everybody on the exact
same page. And you're gonna have this and that, but
you just have to focus on game day or at
least during the week enough where you can just put
it together. I don't know. You tell me it's gotta
be tough. You have a fifty three man roster plus
plus and all these people in the building. How do
you keep it all together, keep the focus so you

(38:30):
can win with great leadership?

Speaker 11 (38:33):
And you brought up a great point. The latter part
of the question is it even feasible to keep everybody
on the same page.

Speaker 5 (38:40):
Absolutely not.

Speaker 11 (38:41):
You have fifty three guys, you have twenty two starters.
That means you have another group of guys that feel
like they should be starters, but they're not. So you
got to keep them excited. You got to keep them
in their lanes. So you don't have everyone on the
same page. But when you have a great leader, you
get them to accept their role. You get them to
understand that, Hey, whether or not you like your playing

(39:02):
time on Sunday when you get in the game, prove
me wrong.

Speaker 5 (39:06):
You know.

Speaker 11 (39:06):
I can see Demiko if there's a player that's upset
with their playing time, and trust me, there is. I
can see Demico having that private session with him, like, hey.

Speaker 5 (39:14):
Prove me wrong, prove me wrong.

Speaker 11 (39:15):
Whether it's on special teams, whether it's on the certain
packages that you're in. So yeah, there's always going to
be ups and downs, there's always going to be grumblings.
I remember when the New England Patriots won every single
game in the regular season. I had a buddy of
mine who went to Rife that was on that team,
and when we would talk during the week, he would
tell me about some of the drama going on, and

(39:36):
I was like, hold on, y'all are at the time,
y'all are living and oh and you're always just going
to have that type of drama. So the cool thing
is to have that leadership that keeps it all in check.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Indeed, I think it's hard for it's hard for anybody
to watch Will Anderson junior and go. He's even better
than he was, Like he's improving each and every time
he goes out on the field. And the one player
that probably stands out yesterday more than anything else was
in the third and seventeen that got completed down to

(40:08):
Juwan Jennings down inside the two yard line. Will Anderson
is essentially bull rushing Trent Williams right into Mac Jones,
which is why the ball kind of floated a little bit.
It's hard to put in words really how great these
two defensive ends have been, but it feels like they
continue to get better and give teams no matter what,

(40:29):
no matter whether they're getting chips, whether they're getting doubles,
they're still impacting the game every time they go out
at such a high level. I mean, this duo has
been as good as I can remember, and it's getting better. Andy,
what are your thoughts about the way Will and Danil
are really setting the tone for them up front?

Speaker 11 (40:47):
On defense, It's the best edge duo that we've seen
in Houston Texas history. And I know people are gonna argue, no,
it's one of those Indy Kalou and Anthony Weaver, but
you know what, all.

Speaker 5 (41:00):
Jokes aside, I didn't even start.

Speaker 11 (41:01):
But when I look at Will Anderson and Daniel Hunter,
that's the best duo that I've seen with the Houston Texans.
And I could probably even argue the best duo on
the AFC South since Dwight Freeney and Mapis and I
don't even have to really go back and check. Like
the way they play, their intensity is ridiculous, and the

(41:23):
stats don't justify it because when you look at you
know JJ Watt what he does, and you know first
Battle of Hall of Fame career, one of the best
to ever do it. You could also see it with
the stats, but it's unfortunate and fortunate at the same time.
With Will Anderson Daniel Hunter, there are so many plays
where they affect the throw, they affect a quarterback, that

(41:44):
they affect the tone of the game because there's a
big TfL hit or Will Anderson's running somebody down from
behind that you don't really feel on the stat sheet,
but when you're watching the game, it just resonates with
you and you see a time and time again with
those two guys. Most people into football, unfortunately just for offense.
But if you just focus on those two guys every game,

(42:05):
you will be entertained. Like it's it's a beautiful, beautiful
piece of art to watch when you watch those two play.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Great stuff and Dice, thanks so much for joining us.
We'll see you at the Texans team shop tomorrow night.
It's six for a live show with Brian Cushing. Can't wait,
all right.

Speaker 5 (42:22):
Had my free shirt ready and y'all keep up.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
All right?

Speaker 3 (42:26):
Thank you, Andy Kalu joining us on Texans Monday coming up.
Let's talk about some of the nuances of this victory,
but really what needs to be done to be Denver
as well, because you want to keep this thing going.
Gotta go back to back to back. You need to
go on a run here, Johnny. You need to win six, seven,
seven of eight right now. Yeah, you have it to do. You,

(42:46):
you have it in you. You have the tools. Well,
let's talk about that. Do you have the tools to
do it? We'll phrase it as a question. Whatever. We'll
be back as Texans Monday.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
More Texans Radio coming up in a moment now More
Texas Monday.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
CJ pulls the trigger short game right side.

Speaker 10 (43:05):
But what he marks on the run twenty five thirty
thirty five, forty right sideline fifty forty five, rights to
tackle forty and finally rope down inside the thirty three
yard line, big catch and.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
Run into forty nine or territory for Woody marks. He's good, Johnny.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
So earlier I was talking right before I start talking
about the noise thing that came up in the press
conference and all that one of the biggest things that
and I lost my train of thought as I was
talking earlier. I was like, what was I thinking about?
This is the play? I was thinking about? The play
is a I want to say, if I remember correctly,
he was a two man route and this one, this

(43:45):
this one the wonder Woody Mark, so not including Woody,
not including Woody. It was a two man route trying
to go downfield. And what was what was the one
of the biggest like noisiest items that came up Jay's
desire to throw the ball down the field and his
comment and the press conference people took and ran with

(44:05):
it about you know, death by a thousand paper cuts.
I'm still getting used to it, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah,
we know CJ wants to throw it deep. I mean yeah,
I mean that's the Yeah, it feels good and you
throw it deep. Longest pass play he's had this year,
he threw it on a check right, Yeah, and he did.
It was almost a Dak Prescott thing. You know what

(44:26):
Dak does that little thing with his hips. It was
like it was like CJ was gearing up like that
to throw it deep. Yeah, he was launching that sucker.
You could tell he was like, I'm crow hopping, I'm
throwing it deep. I'm gonna hey what he's open. It's
like the longest pass play's at all year was a checkdown.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Yeah. I saw it was going short. Then all of
a sudden, I'm thinking there's nobody around him. Nobody there,
nobody not the soul oh run. Yeah he did and
it was good and he made the most of it.
So that was very cool. You know, my expert quarterback
analysis found this he was stepping up in the pocket
a lot beautifully. Because the pressure wasn't coming from up

(45:05):
the middle, they were able to protect the middle. They so, yeah,
stepping up in a clean pocket. Uh, you know the
rush is getting around the edges, not getting around you
know what I mean? When it does happen and you're
running out of time, your two seconds two point five
is running out, he steps up very nicely. Like I watched,

(45:29):
just watching the game, you have utter confidence in his
ability to throw the football accurately, finding the right guys.
And with no Nego and no Kirk, it was a
revelation to see all those guys get the ball spread
around the way they did. Nobody with more than five catches.
But three receivers had five, two had four. That's what
you were looking at in a thirty completion game.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
How about our guy? I fought I fought it hard.
What Brasen Barrios was. I was gonna talk to Woody
and then Woody was not in locker room.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
You did not go there. I thought about it to
ask about the stars.

Speaker 6 (46:02):
I was about to say, man, you guys have back
to back nights.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Of just this is awesome.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
And then I was like no, but wait, do they
go tonight or I think it's tonight. I thought it
was tonight. Maybe it's not tonight, but either way, So
it's for those who don't know. His girlfriend is on
Dancing with the Stars. She's a social media influencer.

Speaker 6 (46:18):
I'm telling you. Braxton was phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
He was.

Speaker 6 (46:20):
He was well, he was.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
You know when you get sick and you're like, man,
I need something, it's the one thing you don't think, Hey, man,
I got this remedy from a buddy of mine who's
another friend of mine. He's like, just take orange juice
and put in you know, like a thing of liquid
ben a drill and then put in this and put
in that and you'll feel better. You're like, a right,
I'll try it all right, here we go give it

(46:44):
to me and also on Boom it works. That was
Braxton yesterday. He had really I'll be honest. Since the
time of the season. I'm like, look, if something weren't
happen to Christian Kirk, you would go to Jalen Knowle.

Speaker 5 (46:57):
Right.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
But one day I remember in practice in training camp.
I remembered watching when they were just they were working
some sets in training camp, and I realized, but they've
got Barrios and Nol together on the field at the
same time. They've got Christian and Barrios together. And I
thought that'd be kind of interesting if they ended up
playing a couple slots the same at the same time.

Speaker 6 (47:19):
And they they didn't do that. I have to go
back and look.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
I don't know if they did that much, but you
realize at that point, like, hey, that position is gonna
get a lot a lot of looks and a lot
of opportunity. And Braxton made some really big key catches,
especially on the first drive. There was one I thought
it was Nol going across, and then he popped up
and he signaled first down, and I was like, that's Burrios.
Oh wow, he got open. You got separation. And that's

(47:46):
all you've got to do is these receivers. You just
have to get just get separation from me to you.
I mean, we don't have much between us, but just
that much separation. Seven will put the ball on you.
He will put the ball on you and let you
do something after they catch you, will give you an opportunity.
And they made the most of it. They caught everything
thrown their way. You talked about the nole catch on
the first drive. Jayala's not a tall guy, but he

(48:09):
had to go up and grab that one. He did.
He got the feed in bounds. Guys held out of
the ball X on that crosser, then he got hit
by Upton Stout. Kind of he has to go up
and get it and as he's reeling it in, he's
getting hit by Stout. X doesn't make that catch in
twenty three or twenty four.

Speaker 3 (48:24):
He hangs on. He hangs on and it's a big
first down. He had the thirty yard touchdown catch. Noel
had that forty four yard catch. That's that's one of
my favorite players. I love that play they run. They
ran it with Kirk in Baltimore. They ran it with
Noah Brown against the Bengals. It's funny because that's a
play that's been carried over. It just it kind of
goes to show all this talk about new offense this

(48:45):
and new offense down there, there are concepts that carry
over one hundred yard fields. There are only so many
things exactly so, only so many notes in the scale.
But you could do it in different ways, different times,
different people, right as they do exactly. All Right, let's
get andre in here next. That was a quickie segment,
but we'll go long with andre Ware coming up, and
we'll also ask him about if he regrets not coaching

(49:07):
because the buyouts are tremendous. Brian Kelly. Anyway, we'll get
into some of that stuff at the end of it.
It's all coming up here on Texans Monday, presented by
Houston Methodist.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Now more Texans Monday, presented by Houston Methodist Good Mawaly.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
In the backfield, CJ in the gun bunch formation left,
I'm third and seven at the San Francisco thirty.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Here's pressure CJ over the.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Middle, caught fifteen ten.

Speaker 10 (49:32):
Five into the insult rock and roll touchdown Houston. Who
is it a play to Exavier Hutchetson who X marks
the spot?

Speaker 2 (49:44):
My god, my man, it was.

Speaker 6 (49:47):
It was Drey's pre game that was who were player
of the game.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
Well, when we say this, and Dre correct me if
I'm wrong here, when we say this, we're kind of
picking a guy who you know you can pick CJ. Stroud, Okay,
but we're kind of being a guy who is going
to rise above and you know it might be a
semi star if you will.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
I mean X is not a you know, bit player here.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yeah, he's not an ECO, he's not a Pro Bowl necessarily,
So that's that's what we're looking.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Who's gonna give the spark right Ray Right.

Speaker 4 (50:18):
It's more of an underdog type player, guy that you're
rooting for to have a good game, but could likely
affect it. And that that's kind of how I define
it and.

Speaker 5 (50:27):
How I look at it.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Yeah, I look at the factor. Well, I don't mean
it like y Hutchins. I mean like an X factor
of the game. It's not like the top player, but
it's somebody that may be off the beaten path could
end up making a big play, and X made a
number of big plays and Dre will start right there.
Hutchinson five, Noel five, Barios five, Marks four, Higgins four,
and then Dalton had two, Jared Wayne had two, even

(50:50):
that Chubb had two. There were eight. I think it's
eight guys that had two or more receptions. How does
it change this offense when they have all those guys
getting involved?

Speaker 4 (51:01):
Yeah, I think yesterday would happen. And first of all,
it affects the defense tremendously because you don't know how
and where you're going to get hit and about how
many because he's spreading the ball around left and right,
and then when you think you have everybody covered up
down Phield, No, He'll just check it down to what
he marks and let him run for fifty plus yards.
So that was fun to watch what it did yesterday

(51:24):
when even taking Nico away in a very indirect way,
it forced CJ to trust the offense. It forced CJ
to trust other receivers other than Nico Collins, so it
forced him to go through his progressions trust the offensive line,
and they played as well again, as good a game
as I've seen in a very very long time. He

(51:46):
had protection, the pocket was excellent, the running game was
there when it needed to be. All of it mixed
together was made for a really good game for the
team in itself.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
Overall, Drake, we're just talking about stepping up in the pocket,
and is that sometimes easier said than done. You've really
got to train yourself to do that in a way,
because there are guys in front of you and you
hope you're not getting pressure up the middle. But you
tell me how that is. You have to work into that,
don't you.

Speaker 4 (52:15):
Yeah, you do, and you see a lot of guys
go through a lot of different drills in the off
season and things of that sort just to try to
train their bodies and their minds just to do it automatically.
It is a tough thing to do because the natural
reaction is to always escape and escape outside. And when

(52:36):
you don't have that, you know, what do you do?
And are you just gonna go there and get tackled. No,
You've got to train where the safe place is within
the pocket and work from there, also keeping your eyes
downfiel in case something comes open in front of you.
So it's not an easy thing to do. It's not
an easy thing to learn. It can be taught, but

(52:56):
it's a natural feel for working in a small area.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Okay, I'm gonna read this tweet to both of you,
and I just want you to tell me just just
if this were to occur for the next how many
games you got left?

Speaker 5 (53:10):
Ten?

Speaker 12 (53:11):
Ten?

Speaker 2 (53:12):
If this occurs for the next ten games, where is
this team? Here's the tweets from around the NFL. Texans
offense allowed season low twenty one point four percent pressure
rate in win over the forty nine ers per next
Gen Stats. If the Texans O line and offense is
able to keep up that low pressure rate.

Speaker 6 (53:34):
What's the ceiling for this offense?

Speaker 4 (53:37):
Drag Oh, I think they can do, you know, anything
they want to do if you get that type of
production that you got yesterday every single week and the
defense stays healthy. Because that's the part that we never
attached to it is can you stay healthy through the
through the whole thing. It's it's really survival of the fittest,

(53:58):
so to speak. But if you take that factor away
and you're just counting offense and defense, the sky's the
limit because the defense is going to keep you on
a lot of games you score the way the offense
did and have the type of production and time of possession.
I think it was over forty one minutes. That's the
type of stuff that wins your football games and wins

(54:21):
consistently no matter where you are home and away.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
Yeah, it's a weird feeling right now because you've only
played seven games with the early buy. You know, here
we are, it's November this weekend, and it feels like
you're barely getting started.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
Almost like come on, let's go, let's go, let's get
on a roll.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
And Dre, You're right, you got to stay healthy you
have a long path in front of you, which is
good news because you have a chance to do something
to remedy the tough start you had at zero to
three and obviously losing to Seattle on Monday night. Drey
tell me though, the confidence building aspect of this being
able to build off of it knowing you could beat

(54:58):
a good team the way you did both sides of
the football thoughts as you face down for Sunday.

Speaker 4 (55:04):
Yeah, I mean, it does wonders for your confidence. You know,
it's a relief every time you win one you put
you go through the week, you're putting game plans together,
You're trying to execute who fits in where there's a
tremendous amount of work that goes in, which is why
you get the reaction from players and coaches that you
get from a regular season win. For the fans and says,

(55:26):
oh yeah they won, and you move on and you
go back to your job. Well, this is their jobs.
These are their jobs, so to speak, and that that
is it's it's a tremendous feeling. But when you know
you're you're putting that stuff together it the end of
the day, that's what you do it for. That's what
you try to come out of it with, and it's
it's one of those where it's hard to do every

(55:48):
single week on a consistent basis. It's not an accident.
Why Kansas City is so good or Buffalo is so
good or all these teams. There's a tremendous amount of
work that goes into the overall that's just to get
to game day, let alone win a football game.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
I don't know what was more impressive, Mark threw Donay
at one point talking about time possession. I remember looking
up and the stat on the board said Texas were
at thirty one minutes. This is before the game is over. Yeah,
I remember the third quarter. I think it was halfway
through the third quarter. It was thirty one minutes to six. Geez.
I don't know what's more impressive that or the fact
that the Niners didn't have a first down until under

(56:26):
a minute left in the first half. That was beautiful.
I mean it was incredible. And one of the things
they were able to do Dre was keep Christian McCaffrey
at check. And that becomes important because these two guys
from the Broncos R J. Harvey and JK. Dobbins are
not Christian McCaffrey, but they are running hot right now

(56:46):
for the Broncos. But in stopping McCaffrey and holding him
under his average rushing wise holding him to just three catches,
I know that had to be number one up on
the white board throughout the week. But they were able
to do it and do it with some really good
linebacker play. What do you think about the defense in
just slowing McCaffrey down and kind of just really shutting

(57:07):
him out for the day.

Speaker 4 (57:09):
Yeah, I thought they did a tremendous job on him
and had a great game plan for for stopping him
and uh and getting things settled and just a handle
on the running game overall, but not letting him make
He's you know, he's gonna get a couple of splash
plays that's just automatic. You just got to not let
him have the huge play that turns the momentum in

(57:31):
another team's favor. Beating a team like like that, Uh,
that does wonders that that is a confidence builder that
you can uh and especially a team with a winning
record coming in at five and two, but you hold
their best player in check. UH. That That's that's tough
to do. And I think mac Jones came in, he
was hot, he was held to uh, you know, held

(57:53):
in check pretty much as well. So their best two
guys are the two hottest guys that they have. You
shut that down, and you certainly got a chance to win.
Then you limit the time that a guy like Krista
McCaffrey's on the field by winning the time of possession battle.
Not only did you win it, you dominated it. So

(58:14):
that's just that's that shows it across the board. And
he just physically when you go back and look at
that game or think about it, you are the more
physical team and that in that matchup against the forty
nine ers.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
Drey, what is your level of surprise, if at all,
about bo Nix's success so far? Here he is year two,
he's about thirty five years old.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
No he's not.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
But he's got fifteen touchdown passes, five interceptions, sixty three
percent completions, and Denver is winning most importantly for their cause.
But here's bo Nicks. I mean he's been around the block.
He's twenty five years old as we speak, so he's
a lot older than c. J. Stroud. He's good.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
He's about a year and three quarters older.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
Than CJ.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
Stroud.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
Not that that means anything or everything or whatever, but
I feel like these guys who have played a lot
of college football, a lot of stars, maybe several different places,
which seems to be the norm right now. Sometimes that
helps when you come into the league.

Speaker 4 (59:09):
Your thoughts it therefore definitely helps because you know, he
has started and played in a lot of big football games.
Think about it from that standpoint. So you're coming into
stadiums like, you know, wherever they're playing sixty seventy eighty thousand,
he's already he's seen that already on the collegiate level,
let alone, has started and played a bunch of games.

(59:32):
You know, he's seen a lot of different defenses, a
lot of things have been thrown at him. He's been
in a lot of different offenses because of the transfers
and the coaching changes. So he's used to that type
of stuff. And to top it off, he's a football
junkie that has merged with another football junkie in Sean Payton,
and so those two get together. I will bet bo

(59:55):
Nicks knew he was going to be drafted by the
Broncos before the draft and sometime before the and not
trying to give it away, and they were already talking
offense and strategies and terminology and things of that. Start
trying to get a head start on it, because there's
no accident that he mastered the offense as fast as
he did. They spent a tremendous amount of time together,

(01:00:17):
eating meals and going, oh, you know, plays on napkins,
things of that sort, across the table from one another.
That's the investment that you have to have in a
young quarterback in order to get the success that you're
looking for early. And you're gonna know whether he can,
how to receive it, how to teach it to him,
because you spent the time doing that, and that's what

(01:00:38):
a guy like Sean Payton will do with bow knicks,
and bow knicks will receive every single minute of it.

Speaker 6 (01:00:44):
Okay, so we'll do the mathro fast.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
Okay, that had thirty three points in the fourth quarter,
that forty four yesterday, right, m seventy seven over five quarters. Yeah,
so if you so, that's fifteen points per quarter. So basically,
if if you projected of our whole game, the Broncos
are averaging sixty points a game. We're the last couple
of games like, wow, Uh, this one's played the Cowboys. Yeah,

(01:01:08):
I know, and I exactly it played the and it
played the Cowboys. Though, I yesterday though the thumb weekends.

Speaker 4 (01:01:16):
Most weekends, the defense.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Sounds like being college. You can score some times, but
not every weekend. That said, Uh, the Broncos and the
Eagles both wore their retro jerseys yesterday, right. The Eagles
were the Kelly green. The Broncos wore that orange and
then the blue like blue ya.

Speaker 6 (01:01:37):
So take your pick, both of you. Take your pick.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Which one's better, the Kelly Green Eagles retro or the
Broncos retro from yesterday's ray. You go first, if you
got to pick one.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
I don't think I have anything in my closet. I
might have a pair of workouts shorts that are green,
which tells you the only thing green I like is money.
So I'm going with the orange crush uniforms. I just don't.
I mean, I'm not a fan of the color, but
I love I made it. I talked about it yesterday

(01:02:09):
when I looked up at the monitor and they were
they were they were starting. Uh those I just love
the orange crush uniforms. Love. I always have always will yep.

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
I thought I was gonna like the Eagles uniforms more
than I did. I thought about this last night. I
thought I was, And then when I saw them in
the highlight reel, I thought they don't. They really do
look dated, they don't look bad. But the Denver ones
just bring back more emotion. L Way, the three Amigo's
all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
I love that. Kelly green Man, Oh no, we don't
even bring up Stagner Lee Man. Wait, I didn't need
for you to go there. Sorry, I didn't.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
Need for you to go there with because every time
I think of a good memory with a team that
you know, we have nothing to do with from those days,
there's an there's a bad oiler memory there, definitely is.

Speaker 4 (01:02:55):
What you do is you could pretty much find one
yes with just about every team.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
In one word, described the vomit and mustard uniforms of
the Steelers last night, right.

Speaker 4 (01:03:07):
Horrible, horrible awful?

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
How can how can anybody produce those that say, but
I know they wore that nineteen thirty six or whatever
you say, or something that looked like that. But the thing,
here's the thing, and the same thing with the Packers retros,
you know it was leather helmets and stuff. You're not
gonna you're trying to duplicate a look with a modern
with modern technology. You can't do it, and we'll just
do something else, Do something else, don't.

Speaker 4 (01:03:30):
Do as as sweet as I like the powdered Blues
or the Chargers. I hated the yellow last that they
couldn't stand. I mean now that uniform spells can't win.
You know, it's just the Steelers as well last night.
It's just just just new going into the game. They're
not winning in those.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
I'll tell you what's sweet though. The H on the
helmet is sweet.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Here look good, it does look good.

Speaker 6 (01:03:55):
My favorite it is the best helmet magica.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
I think I might like that better than the battle
red helmet. Yes, you know, I.

Speaker 6 (01:04:03):
Won't tell you I feel what the battle read with
the H.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Doug, Yeah, he's gonna love this. Whoa battle read.

Speaker 6 (01:04:11):
With the H guys on the air, because that's those
are the things we'll come.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
Up with exactly. We know what we're doing here, all right.
Are a couple of thoughts here on the sport where
they I was going to say with they don't pay
play for pay, but they do actually so college football.
Do you regret not coaching seeing some of these buyouts?

Speaker 4 (01:04:34):
Brian Kelly that that topic came up yesterday, And the
closest I got was there was a time where Lane
was rumored to be getting the job, and he had
called me to come coach quarterbacks for him, and he
was swearing that if I provided whatever help I could,

(01:04:54):
that you know, you know, he had a he had
a spot for me. I'll say it like that. And
uh I he was swearing that this would be his
last stop. He's already coached on the other level. This
was going to be his end, doll and so on
and so forth. And I knew Lane was lying between
his teeth that if I just got in the door
for a while, you know, and been a part of

(01:05:15):
his staff and we had any success, that there would
have been a possibility of moving into you know, a
head coaching role at some point there at you of
h and and so I was that was about the closest.
But no, I don't know, I don't regret it. But
the green, that type of green certainly looks good these days.
It's it's crazy the amount of buyouts that that tops

(01:05:38):
Jimbo stuff at uh at at A and M, and
that was ridiculous in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
When I was first out of Brown and I met
my wife in Jacksonville, She's like, well, you know, what
do you want to do with your life? You want
to coach because coach. At the time, I was like, NA,
coaches don't make enough money. Mistake. Well now that's changed.
So I'm trying to keep the headlines out of my
wife's hands because if she sees what Brian Kelly is
getting paid, I'm gonna get it. Is that the best

(01:06:07):
job available. That's I was gonna say, LSU, Florida, Virginia Tech, UCLA,
A lot of jobs dre.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
Which one to date one don't forget that one day.
I mean, that's a that's a great job. People just
kind of underestimate Penn State. But the Big Ten and
the SEC are going to dominate and rule where college
football goes and what direction it goes here in the
next five to ten years. So I mean, you want
to be associated with either school. I do think, however,

(01:06:35):
it's going to be a little bit easier to recruit Florida.
It's gonna be easier to recruit LSU. I think LSU
is the top job, Florida might be second, and then
it followed by Penn State in that order. That would
be what I would think. And then Arkansas is open
as well. So I mean there's openings everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
It used to be safe this way.

Speaker 4 (01:06:55):
It used to be safe, real quick, Johnny, that to
be a college football coach. At least you got to
the end of the year. People cared about holding recruiting
classes together and so on and so forth. It's not
that way anymore. Yeah, it's just not that way.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
Because we want to work on the next day or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
Yep, exactly, exactly crazy.

Speaker 6 (01:07:18):
Let me ask a question a different way.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Do any of those jobs entice Lane Kiffen to leave
Ole Miss? Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
Here's what I told Paul Karkatera, our sideline guy, my
crew when he posed that question. If I know Lane,
like I know Lane. Lane is in the place that
he wants to be in because he's been there a
couple of years and he's really comfortable. He will flirt
tremendously with Florida. You know why, because it's gonna up

(01:07:50):
the end he at Ole Miss. Yeah, he feels like
he can win at Ole Miss, and he's got to
kind of start over at Florida. I think Keith uses
the job at Florida to up the ante at Old Miss.
Old Miss will bite, they will give him a raise,
and Lane will ride off into the sunset at Ole Miss.
Unless Old Miss doesn't step up financially, then Lane will

(01:08:14):
really start to entertain thinking about thinking about the next job,
which may be Florida.

Speaker 3 (01:08:20):
Am I wrong saying ten to fifteen years ago? We're
not even having this conversation. It's obvious that he's moving
on from Ole Miss. Just like Indiana. You can win
at these places now because of an I am am
I right about that?

Speaker 4 (01:08:32):
That's exactly right. I mean you get a passionate fan
base and people that are willing to step in and
contribute to the program and help the program and whatever manner.
That is huge. It's huge, And you have and can
meet revenue share and you're on I'm playing. You don't

(01:08:52):
have to be exactly there where Texas is or Michigan
or where some of these schools, but you're in the
range where you can compete. Yeah, you can put together
a pretty good run at a place like Old Miss
and a place like Indiana.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
One final thing about Lane Kiffin, Yeah, his agent Jimmy
Sextonlank Kiffin's gonna get paid because Jimmy gets all of
his clients paid, whether they leave a job or staying
a job.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
I was laying here at the ball at the Texas
Bowl a couple of years ago. Years we interviewed him,
played Texas Tech. We interviewed him in the reception.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
He was interesting, he was good fun. It was a
lot of a good way a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:09:30):
He's a lot of fun. He's understood a lot and
some of it is self inflicted, but he's a lot
of fun.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
Did you see the yoga picture last week? Okay, never mind, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:09:41):
Did you see him? Did you see him trolling uh
sec nation with Tim Tebow and and Laura Rutlits over
the weekend because they picked against him. Oh yeah, that's
totally ling, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
Oh this guy is he's just you know, years ago
it was it was annoying in a sense because it
was like, what had he really done? And now he's
I don't know, I find it funny. I like it's entertaining,
you know, like I think we need a little bit
more of that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
No One liked him when he was young, and he's even.

Speaker 4 (01:10:10):
Matured let's just say that in his tweets or x
or Instagram or whatever it is that you read of
his he has matured over the years to where it's
now funny. Back then it was like, oh, you gotta
be kidning me, but now it's actually it's got It
has a nice sense of humor to it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
Drea is a proud alum of the University of Houston.

Speaker 5 (01:10:32):
What does it mean?

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
I know you mentioned it during the game yesterday. Willie
Fritz has got the Coogs at seven and one ranked.
They beat Arizona State. They're Arizona State champions because they
beat both Arizona and Arizona State and back to back weeks.
I was at the game against Arizona. It was as
fun a game as I've been to. Is a clean
game on both sides. They win it with a field
go at the end. They beat Arizona up. It was
eight points at the end, but it really they beat

(01:10:54):
him up pretty much the whole game. How proud are
you what Willy's doing with the Houston Cougars.

Speaker 4 (01:10:58):
Very very Johnny, I'm so proud, you know. I'd like
to say I'm close with coach. We communicate. He is
what I would call a friend, and I'm pulling for him,
and I know what just getting Bowl eligible this year
meant for him to and the growth of this program,

(01:11:19):
to show the growth of the program and that he
can pull off here what he's done everywhere else. And
I think the schedule sets up for a fantastic finish.
They've got a nice slate of games to finish out
around out the season. But what he's done has been tremendous.
What he has done off the field that people don't

(01:11:39):
talk about in the recruiting classes that he's putting together
for the future of this program. Uh that that is
on par with in my opinion, with everything that not
so much not totally what the basketball program is, but
boy has he stepped up to kind of close the
gap there When people aren't just talking about what Kelvin
Sampson has done at the University of Houston. Now it's

(01:12:02):
Willie Fritz and he's quietly approaching that conversation where football
matches basketball. It is tremendous. It's a great time to
be a Cougar athletically, and I couldn't be more proud
of both programs, both basketball and the football program.

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
Very nice indeed. Yeah, tremendous win over the weekend Arizona State.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
Okay, Trey, who do you have this week.

Speaker 4 (01:12:27):
Going up to Syracuse? So I'm going a long way
away going up to Syracuse. Watch and play North Carolina again.
I've got and I say again because I had North
Carolina cal two weekends ago. So here we go again, boys,
and you know what I mean by that. So we
should be an interesting game.

Speaker 3 (01:12:44):
So did you have the production meeting with Belichick a
couple of weeks ago?

Speaker 4 (01:12:49):
Yes, we did the zoom call with Coach Belichick.

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
Was anybody talking in the background? Never mind, No, don't
answer that, but was it.

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):
Anybody really?

Speaker 5 (01:13:04):
Really? But not really?

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
Anybody walked by, you know, the background, you know, just
walk through anyway?

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Cool?

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
All right, very good, Well we'll regroup on this one.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
Dray, thanks a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:13:19):
All right, guys, I'll talk to you later.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
Okay, Next up, we didn't have mon last week because
it was a weird week. But after the worst laws
in the history of the franchise, they bounced. Well I
don't want to speak for him. Let's hear from the
general next here on Texans Monday.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
Now back to Texans Monday.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
Scroud of the gun. Here's the snack.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
CJ with a little time throws to the end zone.

Speaker 10 (01:13:43):
Caught touchdown Jayden Higgins.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
Houston scores. CJ.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
Stroud pops the touchdown pass over the middle to the
rookie Higgins, and Stroud is hot to start this game,
all right. Stroud stayed hot. Stroud over three hundred yards
first three hundred plus yard.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
Game in twenty one outings.

Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
Wow, and just looked tremendous and a lopsided victory.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
Is it really lops?

Speaker 3 (01:14:13):
It's a two score win, and it was fine?

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
It loops it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:16):
I think this is one people said on Monday night
or after that game that the game was not as
close as the score would indicate.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
This is one of those.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Even though it got to a one score game, I
was never panicking, but I knew you needed a drive
and they got one to make it a two score lead.

Speaker 5 (01:14:31):
Again.

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
Anyway, let's get the thoughts of the Hall of Famer
John McClain, the General joining us.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
Good morning, General.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
Okay, it was rough Monday night, but this was a
whole lot better on Sunday afternoon.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
Your thoughts.

Speaker 12 (01:14:43):
I watched it last night two times, everything in slow
motion and watching the different positions, and first of all,
if I had heard any more about forty nine ers injuries,
I was gonna throw up. They don't mention it. Joe
makes and Nato'collins, Christian Kirk thank Dale missed from the
Texans offense, but that's fine. And I think the reason

(01:15:04):
it seemed more lopsided that touch now at the end
of the first half was on the special teams on
the kickoff coverage and not so much the defense. And
I felt bad for Stroud's one interception as time was
running out in the first half and it looked like
Jaylen Nole kept running and he expected him to break

(01:15:24):
it off. So Stroud was great. But it all starts
with the offensive line, tight ends, wide receivers, everybody blocking
and British Brooks. British Brooks just annihilated one of the
forty nine ers. It got out and all the former
NFL people online, same NFL former players and gms have

(01:15:45):
been very critical of the offense after the Seattle game,
kept running that play where British Brooks just steamrolled the
forty nine ers. So it started with the blogging. It
could tell. Strad was very very confident when he threw
big Blaze Woody marks fifty and twenty three that Xavier

(01:16:05):
Hutchinson passed and Ron perfect pass from Strive. Great run
by Hutchins, and I didn't know he was that fast
and getting Jayalen Noel and Jayde Niggins involved as a
thing of beauty. Five let's see one, two, three, five
players caught at least four passes. He was spreading the
wealth and it was just an outstanding performance. Started up

(01:16:27):
front defensively McCaffrey twenty five yards three point one average
for Carrie. They only ran the ball ten times. Mac
Jones said afterward it was the best defense they faced
this season and it was just a tremendous performance on
both sides of the ball. And now they get Denver.

(01:16:51):
Then Denver just crushed the Cowboys. I taped it and
watched it, and the Broncos had more saxon eighteen in
the league. They're coming in if somehow the Texans can
beat them, and they're certainly capable. They get Jacksonville and
Tennessee back to back, and this team could get on
a roll.

Speaker 6 (01:17:10):
Well, it would be nice if they could get on
a roll.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
General the offense had guys impacting it that we maybe
hadn't seen a ton of the Cyclones obviously had big days,
but Braxton Burials also stepped in and did a really
nice job with no Nico and no Kirk. Were your
thoughts about how the receivers stepped up and gave them
impactful plays all game long?

Speaker 12 (01:17:34):
Big tap Barry I was dead one play I think
it was in the first quarter where he caught the bass,
got it still broke a couple of tackles to get
a first down. I'm sorry he got hurt and murder
anything about it. But we don't know how much how
long Collins is going to be out. But one of
the things they had with Hutchinson Knowle Higgins they didn't

(01:17:56):
and even Jared waynecock two passes the dar Goombley had
an eight yard catch and Dalton Schultz who had nine
and Seattle was limited to two because they were throwing
to the whiteouts so much. And it was just a
thing of beauty to think what this k team can
do when they get protection. Now, the forty nine ers

(01:18:16):
did have pass rushers out the Broncos don't. The Broncos
is going to be for the offensive line. The toughest
test of the year because the last two years they've
been the best pass rush team in the NFL, and
they got to feel very confident coming off of that
embarrassment of the Cowboys, and I know we all hate that,

(01:18:36):
and I look forward to this game and fired up
about it, fired up about seeing if the offensive line
can do it. Stride was only hit two times as
opposed to Mac Jones being knocked down six times, three
by will Anderson Junior and two by Derrick Barnett who
had a sack. And the defense defense was outstanding as well,

(01:19:00):
and they didn't give up big plays like they had
the week before. It was just a great performance by
the offense and defense. And Nick Kayley, who's been getting
blasted by fans in the media. Nick deserves a lot
of broup plays for the play column go into the
quarterback snake and it works, and things that they made

(01:19:20):
adjustments that they did not do in Seattle. It was
a great thing to watch.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
Yeah, it certainly was.

Speaker 3 (01:19:28):
And you know, it's not a great thing to watch
the Colts going out to seven and one after a
thirty eight to fourteen victory over the Titans. And I
look at the Colts, John, I just think this is
a good team. I know people complain about the schedule
not being difficult, but they are just bludgeting a lot
of people here that run into their path. So your

(01:19:48):
thoughts on their success so far. They're going to get
the Steelers on Sunday. I mean, I don't even know
what that means anymore after last night in the game before.
So you tell me your thoughts on the Colts here.

Speaker 12 (01:19:58):
After eight games, they are on a page to break
the all time record for touchdowns rushing now compared to
the Packers when they played fourteen, they should be able
to do the seventeen. But Jonathan Taylor, he's got to
be an MVP conversation. So there's Daniel Jones. They have
been incredible, all that talent. They's stock pilot wide receiver.

(01:20:22):
They have the best tight end rookie one of the best,
Tyler Warren. He's been tremendous. Their defense has been great.
They get the tee off on teams in the second
half because they have a big lead. Titans couldn't hang
with them, and that last game of the year, that's
a teap to be determined. It'll be really interesting to
see the playoff ramifications. The way it's going to the Colts.

(01:20:46):
They may have the division clinched by Thanksgiving because they
have been tremendous and they deserve a lot of credit.
Daniel Jones right now got to be the leading candidate
to Comeback Player of the Year. And and Johnathan Taylor
nobody knows better than the Texans what he's capable of.
Between Jonathan Taylor and Derrick Henry, those guys have put

(01:21:09):
a lie of misery on the Texans through the years.
But they've now shut down Henry. And if you can
shut down Derrick Henry, you can contain Jonathan Taylor.

Speaker 2 (01:21:19):
Can you imagine us getting on a roll? Oh, we
have to go up there holding to Indy. I'm not
ready just shutting it down. It's gonna happen. The date
will occur, It's on the schedule. The Texans will be
up there, and you know that that week. My hair
is gonna be spiked.

Speaker 3 (01:21:35):
Okay, I'm just gonna be like without any product whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
This is gonna it is gonna be on in that one. Yeah,
it's gonna be. It definitely will be Chiefs Commanders tonight.
Marcus Barriota will quarterback the Commanders General. Do you give
him and the Commanders a shot at all.

Speaker 12 (01:21:52):
No Chiefs, Ron Row Mariota. Can you imagine you have
all these nationally televised games with Cincinnati and Washington and
then and Jaden Daniels wasn't playing really well from the
get go. Drake May and bow Knicks had run off
and left him in their second seasons, partially because of
injuries that they were struggling even when he was healthy.

(01:22:14):
But right now the networks coming out with Mariota and
then of course with Joe Flacco and Browning and Cincinnati,
I feel bad for him. That's what happens when you
lose your quarterback. So no, the Chiefs right now, we're
talking about the Colts. You know, Buffalo came back just
annihilated Andy Dalton and the Panthers. So I still haven't

(01:22:38):
given up on the on the Bills and Lions. As
my Super Bowl teams were right now, I'd be art
pressed to pick somebody ahead of the Chiefs and the Colts.

Speaker 3 (01:22:48):
Yeah, I agree, I think you have to give it
to the Chiefs right now. But what about the Patriots here?
And look, their schedule has not exactly been Murderer's row,
But you got to give them credit. And they took
on the Browns yesterday they Demolo then thirty two to thirteen.
So Cleveland two and six, just watching, thank you. But
the thoughts on the New England Patriots general, who when
I look down the stretch here, they've got a few

(01:23:11):
land mines, but a lot of Jets, Dolphins, Giants.

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):
Two with the Jets. So here we go.

Speaker 12 (01:23:16):
What do you think The win Buffalo made them legitimate?
But they're a year ahead. They had more money to
spend in any team in the off season, they spent
it wisely. They also have more cap dollars right now
than any team, so they are set up to have
another great offseason. And Mike Rabel right now would be

(01:23:40):
a Coach of the Year candidate. I can't imagine he
would beat out Shane Stike in Indianapolis. And considering how
bad the schedule is, how bad their division is. Even
though the Dolphins bounce back to a tongue of a
low had a great game, I still think, you know,
they're a wildcard team at best. But do not see
the Patriots winning the division over the Bills.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
How about the Ravens winning the division over the Steelers?
From that get Up, Get Up was on and they
flashed the odds to win the AFC North. The Ravens
are the only team with a minus number. Wow, they're
two and five.

Speaker 3 (01:24:23):
Well, Lamar might come back Thursday, General, what do you
think here? They're two and five. Now the Steelers look
like they're plumbting on the defensive side of the ball.

Speaker 12 (01:24:29):
Anyway, we talked about this last week when we thought
Lamar Jackson might be back, because the Ravens faked like
he might be back, which could cost them a draft
choice for a lot of money. Because you can't do that,
especially in the current climate We've got the NBA and
all these stories coming out about athletes and gambling. You

(01:24:50):
cannot manipulate the injury report, which John Arbaugh claimed was
an accident. Like you've been coaching eighteen years, give me
a bleeping break. And I think this right now, if
you look around the NFL and Tyler Huntley played really well,
Why were they playing Cooper Rush? Why did they not

(01:25:12):
see Huntley? He's played for him before in his won
a few games, actually went to the Pro Bowl one
season when Lamar Jackson was injured. But if Jason comes
back on the short week, great but if they played
the way they played Sunday and Hundley completed a high
percentage of his passes, they're capable beating anyone. They're going

(01:25:33):
to get more defensive players back. So I'm going with
the Ravens. Nobody's going to want to play them when
they get to the playoffs and they have to go
and have to go to Baltimore for the first round.

Speaker 3 (01:25:45):
Good to get them when you got them, no doubt
about that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
They get them again maybe who knows.

Speaker 3 (01:25:51):
Oh, I'll sign up for that right now. That means
you're in the postseason.

Speaker 6 (01:25:53):
You know who returned yesterday though, that made a big difference.

Speaker 2 (01:25:56):
Patrick or cart times I talked about that big soccer
playing fullback, Yeah, changes everything. You put three hundred pounds
in front of Derick Henry, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:26:04):
Yeah, you gotta deal with him. Yep, you gotta deal
with him. All right, General, looking forward to Sunday and
looking forward to Thursday, another visit with you. Thank you
very much for joining us this morning.

Speaker 12 (01:26:12):
I look forward to it, guys, Thank you very much
as always.

Speaker 3 (01:26:15):
All right, thank you and smoking hot players of the game.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
Who are they?

Speaker 3 (01:26:19):
Plenty of them, Plenty of work to go around. For everybody,
as the Texans were victorious over the forty nine ers
and have Denver coming up next. Denver beating the Cowboys
by twenty. Thank you for doing that, but we hated
you getting another victory at six and two. Now we'll
talk about it on Texans Monday.

Speaker 1 (01:26:37):
Now more Texans Monday.

Speaker 3 (01:26:41):
CJ and the gut Stroud hands off to Woody Marks
again running to the left side, has the corner thirty
twenty five twenty and knocking them ount inside the fifteen
yard line.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
Woody Marks does.

Speaker 3 (01:26:53):
It again, runs it into the red zone as the
Texans have a big drive going when they needed it most.
All right, bigger game, Johnny, Woody Marks. You have to
pick among your children here. Oh it's not fair, Woody Marks,
nol Higgins, Ursery, these rookies all playing a big job.

(01:27:17):
And now Ursery big because I didn't mention his name once.
I think I mentioned his name just to say it once.
It's like Ursery playing left tackle. Make sure, just to
remind people we got a rookie over there at left tackle.
Try to get through this storm here and business handling
things well. And boy, what an opportunity this is to
have these next two at home, and then you go
to Tennessee.

Speaker 2 (01:27:38):
Are you kidding?

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):
And look, I look at some of these other teams
schedules and I'm drooling thinking about what it would be
like to play some of these squads. But you're playing Denver.
Then you're playing Jacksonville a winning team as we speak
right now. Who does Jacksonville have this week as they
get back from the bye? Let me see, Jags were off.
There were six teams with byes. Oh, they're at the Raiders,
so they could get a winning come in fat happy,

(01:28:00):
just like the Broncos are gonna be fat and happy.
We're gonna roll them over.

Speaker 2 (01:28:03):
It's gonna be playoff games Sunday. Man, then it's gonna
be a playoff game Sundawn. They're all, I mean, look
a four losses right now? How many games can you
lose the rest of the way? Two more? That's it.
Maybe that's the way they going.

Speaker 3 (01:28:16):
They got to be the right losses too, And look,
I don't want to lose two more. I want to
lose no more. But you know the way it's going
in the AFC. When you look at the Patriots with
six wins, the Colts with seven wins, the Bills.

Speaker 2 (01:28:28):
Are not that.

Speaker 3 (01:28:29):
Yeah, you didn't expect two teams in the AFC East
to have high wind totals. You thought maybe the Dolphins
would sneak up to eight to nine, but the Patriots
already at six.

Speaker 2 (01:28:38):
If I would have told you at the beginning of
the year, at this point, the Ravens would be two
and six, five and five starry, and the Chiefs would
be four and three.

Speaker 3 (01:28:48):
Yeah, what would you have thought?

Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
And the Bills would be foll The Bills are not
five and two.

Speaker 3 (01:28:53):
But I would think something's going wrong in Kansas City.
But you know, looking at.

Speaker 2 (01:28:56):
Based on us, I would be like, oh man, we
were at the top. We're right, Yeah, well we're not.
Our marching for air is very, very small. That makes
this game against the Broncos a playoff game.

Speaker 6 (01:29:09):
If you were sitting here six and one.

Speaker 2 (01:29:12):
Or five and two, then okay, if you don't get it,
you still got Jacksonville, Tennessee before you take on the
Buffalo Bills, okay, and get kind of back on track.
But this point, there is there is no there is
no margin for air. At this point. You play a
number of good teams and it's just it's the next
one on the schedule, but it is a bit as

(01:29:34):
big we we thought Seattle was big. Okay, it didn't
turn out the way we wanted to. We knew yesterday
was you got to have this one, and you made
a statement yesterday of what team you could be. And
now you've got this team coming in that is hot offensively,
hot defensively, they can do some things. So it's a
big test. But you're playing at home. You mentioned the guys,

(01:29:56):
the rookies stepping up. At one point during the game,
all of were on the field together. Yeah, no, all
of them were on the field together. I thought it's
pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:30:06):
It is cool.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
It's pretty cool, and it shows you how youthfulest offense is.
That's all rookies, where it could get go, where it
could go.

Speaker 3 (01:30:12):
Four rookies on offense on a day where you rack
up over four hundred yards.

Speaker 2 (01:30:18):
Yeah, that's pretty beautiful. Take it.

Speaker 3 (01:30:20):
Wait, what was the total yards?

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
Total? Total, total total for seventy ish.

Speaker 5 (01:30:27):
That's nice, I'll find it here.

Speaker 3 (01:30:28):
Eventually it was force for seventy five.

Speaker 2 (01:30:32):
Yeah, that's what I thought. For seventy five. You more
than doubled them up.

Speaker 6 (01:30:36):
Yea, just like you more than doubled up the Ravens.

Speaker 2 (01:30:38):
You more than doubled up the Titans. Nine.

Speaker 3 (01:30:40):
When you've won, you've dominated, really nine of sixteen on
third down.

Speaker 6 (01:30:44):
Now you're gonna win some close games, Well close.

Speaker 3 (01:30:47):
I just blow them out on Sunday. Well yeah, I
mean it'd be nice, but they were down nineteen nothing
to the Giants at home. Anything's possible in this league.
We all know it's week to week. Yeah, it's true,
because the Ravens won yesterday without Lamar. The Dolphins beat
Atlanta when Atlanta desperately needed it was playing. And by
the way, that's got it.

Speaker 6 (01:31:03):
That's dead dead dead, that's dead good dead dead.

Speaker 2 (01:31:07):
I mean weird dead weird.

Speaker 3 (01:31:09):
Where you're begging for Penis, not that you don't want
to see Petis if you're an Atlanta fan, he's in
there for a reason. But you thought that there was
more there with Cousins. He's supposed to be the guy.

Speaker 2 (01:31:18):
But did you see what the forty nine ers did
to to Penix? They destroyed him. Oh, they were the
same defense that we put four seventy five on. They
destroyed Penix and Bjon. Yeah, had all kinds of.

Speaker 3 (01:31:32):
Issues again, some of this stuff it is so weak
to week because they look at what Seattle did. They figure, well,
we should be able to do that. We hung with
them and we beat them at the play.

Speaker 2 (01:31:40):
Are so happy with us. I saw a few of
their tweets. They're just like it was a couple of
them were kind of funny, but it was like, oh, man,
yeah we did. We did the NFC West of Favorite yesterday,
knocking off knocking off the Niners. It was, Uh, it
was interesting after the game. I'm always curious after a game,
like what the opponent has to say about us? What

(01:32:01):
do they have to say about us? And I immediately
saw Kyle Shanahan's comment, which was they kicked our ass
and we did.

Speaker 3 (01:32:09):
Yeah we did.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
After that, Jones saying I faced that defense. I think
he said three times in the last how many ever years,
and he goes, that's the best defense. Wow, And I
think a lot of people think that. I think a
lot of people, you know, if it's if it's not us,
it's maybe the Broncos at this point, I don't know,
but it was clear for him to say, yeah, that's

(01:32:31):
the best defense. Maybe the Packers and they give up
twenty five last night, But.

Speaker 3 (01:32:34):
Well about this. I'll give you some numbers here, not
too many. Denver's fifth and total defense, yardage, all right,
points per game, Denver, they were right up there, but
they've given up some lately. They're fifth in points per game,
all right, but it's eighteen to nine, so it's nineteen
points per game. Texans are at fourteen to seven right now.
Yesterday hurt your average. Oh, but you're number one in

(01:32:55):
points at the point. And this is the first time
in history that's ever happened. I don't remember a time
this late in the season when the Texans were this
high in defense in both those categories. Demiko's last defense
in San Francisco. I'll paint this picture. They were number
one points in yards and it was the first time
in forty nine ers history they had achieved that. And
that's saying something. Yards are one thing. What's your points? Well,

(01:33:19):
if those are low two, you're doing some good things,
and then you look at third downs and everything else,
but points, it's points, right, And it's a team thing too,
because if the offense is coughing it up in your
twenty yard like the Titans were won in yards last
year for a long time, but the offense was given
the opponent the ball in the twenty all the time
or wherever, with all these turnovers, and people were scoring
at will, so they weren't going to be there at

(01:33:39):
scoring anyway. That's it for the show this morning in
the Loop. Coming up next Lopez and Reggie, and we'll
be back at five with the Demico Ryans Program. You
don't want to miss that. Thank you very much, Ben
for producing. Have a great day everyone, Go Texans.