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September 20, 2024 • 12 mins
With the season underway and stakes at newer heights, the Houston Texans have kicked off the season 2-0 in their first two games following Week 1 and 2. NFL Insider Aaron Wilson joins and briefly reflects on the Texans first two weeks and what to look for ahead of Sundays game against the Vikings.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Salsbury Show continues.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
As we continue to talk Houston Texans football here on
the Sean Salisbury Show, we're going to welcome in NFL
insider Aaron Wilson.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yeah's weekly visit. Great to have him back on for
the football season. You catch Aaron on kPr S get
all this great stuff there kPr C too, and right
here every single Friday.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Great to have you on, Aaron.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
And I would say, man, it's the season's in, but
the season's always in for you. You never quit working.
And you can catch him on Aaron at Aaron Wilson
on Twitter. Let's start here at the beginning of the season.
We might have thought this was going to be a tough,
tough test, but Darnold's playing well. This is going to
be a little more difficult than we thought preseason wise
with Houston heading into Minnesota.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
I thank you Sean's an bread. A lot of that
is because Sam Donald's improvement.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Tripley. We got some connection problems. Can you tell him
just give us a shower back real quick. I'm not
sure what's going on with the phone lines. Yeah, it
looks like we've got a little little issue. We'll get
that figured out. What what give me one of those?
Give me what.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
That is?

Speaker 1 (01:21):
What you wanted to? Give me a hard call him
on the hot line, tripley me, give me a hard count,
righty can give me a play call in the huddle,
give me the hard count. So it's on three. Give
me on red.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Seven, Red seven, hot rout, hot route?

Speaker 1 (01:34):
You want to run? You think you told?

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Hey?

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Why heady? Whyladie kuku?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Is it good?

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:43):
All right?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Because I'm getting tired of this kidence. Let's try Aaron Wilson. Aaron,
we got you.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
All that money, all that money you make, you can't
get a new phone.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Boy got cricket.

Speaker 4 (02:01):
We did have a power outage last night, but yeah,
they got to get it together. The center point.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Guys, Hey, don't tell me how rough the water is
bringing the ship now, I'm kidding you, brother.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
Yah Sam Donald's improvement with Kevin O'Connell. They've taken him
to a different level. Of course, he has the great
Justin Jefferson, the Church of That helps any quarterback looks
very good. But it's more than that. Donald's playing good football.
He's making good decisions and the other side of the football.
That's probably what concerns the Texans the most is the unpredictable,
aggressive Brian Flora's defense. A lot of pre snap activity,

(02:35):
to say the least, and some good football players, including
a couple of guys that we know very well, Jonathan
Gernard and Blake Cashman, and they got stuff on Gilmore.
They've got a good pass tress. They leave the NFL
in sacks, and Flora's has really done a great job
as the architect of that defense. So no, this is
a difficult football game. And the Texans don't have Joe Mixon,

(02:56):
looks like they won't have Danian Pierce, so cam Akers
will have to be RB one against his old team.
And the only real good news for the Texans this
week on the injury front is Juice Scrugs is back
from agroin injury. That's a report of what happened, and
now he is back and unfortunately Grevin Jordan out for
the year with the torn acl.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Hey, Aaron, Brian Flores can't help himself with this either,
and I mean this is a compliment. He is going
to find ways to pressure you some way or the other.
He's going to try to find it and to the
weakness at least the naked eye weakness the first two games,
aside from pre snap penalties that are driving me crazy.
Got to fix that is there. Last year they got
better protecting the passer. Is that they've given up some

(03:38):
pressures and some sacks. They they got to play better there.
So Brian flor is going to try to find that weakness.
How much pressure do you expect, especially since they're on
their third back and he studied the tape and knows
what's going on in the first two weeks. How much
pressure do you expect from him? And how much multiple
stuff do you think we'll see He's.

Speaker 4 (03:56):
Going to bring the kitchen sink. The only variable is
this he expect them to adjust and what does he
adjust to their anticipated adjustment? So is Brian going to
debate them into possibly showing a lot of blitz pressure
and then backing out of it and trying to flood zones.
It's very hard to fool CJ. Stroud, but you know

(04:17):
he is in his second year. This is a veteran
defensive coordinator. So something of a chess match is going
on between BRIANDJ and Bobby Slowick. So I can't wait
to watch the strategy and how they do things. I
think they're going to have to do some quick game.
I think they're going to have to do some stuff
to create time. You know, I'm not worried about Larry mctempson.

(04:40):
He was the highest rated pass blocker last week. But
it's other guys are having problems. They're having problems with stunts,
having problems with some speed rush and they're getting there.
And CJ. Stroud is very elusive. He's the guy he's
always looking to, you know, run, but he is looking
to run to throw right and he does a great

(05:00):
so I think that, you know, it'll be pretty competitive
between these two units.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, no doubt about it. Aaron Wilson's weekly visit. You
can catch them on KPRC two right here with us
every Friday as well and on Twitter at Aaron Wilson. Yeah,
want Tunsil, want that ball snap. I'm not worried about
tons of one, but either I'm I just don't want
to be first and fifteen on pre snap penalties and
it'll be loud Minnesota, as you will know, right Aaron,
Let's go to the offensive side as well, running the
first down. I'm a big believer that first downs is important,

(05:26):
if not the most important down in football. I've always
said it because it'll help you. If you're third and four,
it's a lot better than being third and nine. So
you got to win on first down. They're not winning
on first down, so a two conservative plant it close
to the vest. What will we see from them on
first down? And this week, especially knowing what Brian Flores's
defense is all about, do we expect shots?

Speaker 4 (05:46):
I think that it looks deep to Nico Collins. I
don't think they have any hesitation to throw to Nico.
He's a go to guy for the Texans amongst the receivers,
even more so than say a Stephan Diggs. I expect
them to continue to Nico. That's working. He leads the
NFL and receiving yards. So they're not going to stop
throwing a Nico. He's still gonna be a high volume

(06:08):
target guy. They're gonna trust him on the sidelines. They're
gonna trust him deep, and you know, I think that
they'll try to do a few things, maybe some screens
to slow down the Vikings pass rush and get them
back on their heels a little bit. I don't know
if They're going to run the ball a whole bunch,
but they're going to at least have to try to
establish the run. And k Makers a pretty elusive guy,

(06:30):
be pretty motivated play against his former team. I think
he can get them some yards, but I'm not anticipating
maybe one hundred yard game from him.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
Is this the second most complete team in the NFL?

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Or should I say the AFC right now? Meaning the Texas.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
They've got all that it takes. There's a few things
like you hit on with the you know, the we
didn't talk about the penalties. That's been a problem. They
got to, you know, be a cleaner team with that
twelve penalties. That's not it what they did against the Bear.
You know, some of these things like pass rush vulnerability
and that other aspect, the penalty bug. If they don't

(07:08):
fix these is eventually going to cost them a game.
And you know that's the expectation, right They're not. Nobody
thought they were going defeated. Uh. But it's a very good,
complete football team that Nick Aterio has done a good
job of building and Demico Ryans of developing. I still
see them as one of the most competitive teams and
a top five team here in the AFC, and they

(07:29):
can make some noise in the playoffs, but they've got
a lot of improving to do. There's some things here
earlier the season that Fanny get fixed.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Where's the biggest improvement?

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Not?

Speaker 3 (07:39):
I mean I understand first down, what do we missing
on the improvement? With your eye and talking and watching
and listening to them, is there some hidden improvement that
needs to be made that we're not seeing?

Speaker 4 (07:50):
Still need I think you know, you see the pass
rus that's pretty obvious that that's better. I still think
that they can be even better on defense. As well
as they play against Chicago it's dominant, there's still more
ahead of them. They can do even more. This can
be a special defense with the personnel they have. You know,
we saw obviously the week one to week two improvement

(08:12):
of Kamar Lassiter that was impressive. Going with Derek Stingley junior.
They'll both need to do a good job against Justin
Jefferson or they're just side the football. You know, we've
been hitting on it. We talked about penalty, was talking
about the cast rush, some about assignments, alignment technique, all
those things they can get better at. And you know,
the way they were blocking at the second level in

(08:32):
the first game. They have to get back to that.
In Week three, they didn't block that well at the
second level. In Week two, there was some yards that
could have been had you saw Joe Mixon talking to
Jared Patterson, it was very obvious what he was talking
about about a miss block down the field. But I
think with Scrugs back in the lineup, I think that
will help them a lot and solidify the middle, and

(08:55):
maybe they're able to run the ball a little bit
better even without Joe mixonm last week, I mean they weren't.
They were really kinding in stonewalled. I think Chicago's got
a lot of good defensive players. You got to give
them some credit to no no what it's going to
be a dominant juggernaut with the parody of this league
right now. Texans just a few things they can get
better at. I think they can also get a little

(09:17):
bit better at just the timing of some of the plays.
But it's early in the season and that's natural. You're
gonna have some of those issues all right now.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
With this Caleb Williams, c J.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Stroud thing I listen, I hear a lot of dumb
things on TV like eliminate cover two.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
But that's for another day.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Is I don't understand what the what the hang up
is about with c J Stroud just offering a friend
some not only advice, but support a quarterback fraternity. We
we're chasing it. We're chasing a ghost here mountain out
of a mole hill. That to me didn't seem anything
like that's my little bro.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
That's that.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
It seemed to me like a quarterback looking after a
guy because he's been a rookie before and a top
draft pick, the second pick last year, the first pick
for Caleb Williams this year. The same to me, Like
was just fun advice and the guy looking after a buddy.

Speaker 4 (10:03):
Well it should yeah, absolutely agree with you. It should
have been a non story. The reason it is because
everyone's interpreting body language, all the social media experts, so
called experts, watching every little nuance. The interpretation that CJ gave,
you know, I feel like that is the interpretation that
Caleb just wasn't in the mood to have a chat

(10:25):
right then, he just lost a football game. That doesn't
make me downgrade Caleb. You know, if you show me
a good loser, you know, and I mean, that's not
what I want to see from my starting quarterback. He
was upset, he'd had a rough night. He was sacked
seven times, hit eleven times, pressure thirty six times. He
was under constant duress, and maybe he just wasn't in
the mood right then to have a chat. The other

(10:46):
issue is, I mean, I guess, you know, hindsight, you know,
they're not that close to those guys, they're not like
best friends. So maybe he just wasn't in the mood
for the mentor for a guy he doesn't know as well,
or doesn't want to you know, listen to That's okay,
that doesn't you know, condemned Caleb if he doesn't have to.
He's probably got lots of mentors if he doesn't want
to hear that good advice. But CJ is very well intentioned.

(11:06):
He was being very nice. And yeah, my takeaway is
that Caleb is the reason it's a story, because you
saw his body langs. He's pulling away, he's he doesn't
really want to have a chat right then, or an
extended chat, and you know, he acknowledged and he wasn't
like really rude, but you know, mildly. The reason it's
a story. I mean, like if you look at the
New York people are worrying about this dumb Aaron Rodgers

(11:28):
Robert Solid thing, They're fine, that was no big deal.
They're just talking about, you know, getting the lead and
being a kind of boisterous with each other. In this case, yeah,
I think Caleb could be a little more open to
the advice. But at the same time, it's probably one
of those ones with the cameras on you. You say, hey, broke,
you know, tough game and see down the road. Uh,
let's talk off fixture or something like that. Maybe you

(11:50):
have a conversation. The problem is that the conversation both
as are micd up. This is on NFL films, everybody's watching,
I'm in the media. But I would say, yeah, they're
not have in a private moment, and so they both
have to have that expectation, right Caleb. Caleb wasn't trying
to do any uh any acting out there. I mean,
he's that was who he that was basically he was

(12:12):
being himself and in that moment, he's upset, he's frustrated,
he just lost, he's got his butt kicked. You month
talk that's okay. I mean you were a quarterback too.
I mean there might have been some games where mean
you probably wouldn't have wanted to have absolutely lost.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah, and you know what, I guarantee, well he may
not have paid attention, or at least it looked like it.
He heard what what what Stroud said and someday it
may be a valuable just said, you got it inside
you and you're gonna be a great player, a hell
of a player in the league. Good stuff, man, should
be a fun game. Look forward to our conversation next week.
Can't wait till Sunday, and and we look forward to
having you on all season long. Brother, Thank you. That's

(12:50):
Aaron Wilson. Good stuff. And it's gonna be a hell
of a game this week. I think it's gonna be
one of the fun games of the weekend. Sports Talk
seven to ninety rolls on
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