Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast discuss the difficulty the Houston Texans have in defending the run, pass and run-pass option plays against the Indianapolis Colts to open the 2024 season
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00:00Sean, you know how I'll tell you sometimes when I'm watching football, I get the old feeling I
00:05used to get as a player of a certain anxiety when there's an offense that puts you in a bind.
00:11With defensive ends, it's always versus the option game. Especially the option game,
00:17the old ways, and a lot of us grew up playing against the veer option,
00:20it puts the defensive end in a bind. You're going to try to play it the right way and it's stressful.
00:25Um, you might have a coach that says, ah, just hit the quarterback every time. Like,
00:29all right, great. If you're going to try to play it the right way where you have to read it,
00:33it's stressful as hell. That now with the RPOs, that's how I feel about the linebackers.
00:40These, and Steichen is brilliant with it. He was really good at it with Gardner-Minchu,
00:44Gardner-Minchu executed it really well. It puts the linebackers and the nickelback,
00:50when he's like Jalen Petrie, basically it puts them in unwinnable situations.
00:56It puts you in such a bind where your read has to be absolutely perfect or
01:02Jonathan Taylor's going to rush for 188 yards. Um, the Titans. So when Al Shire was a linebacker,
01:08uh, the, the first game they had last year, Zach Moss ran for over 150 yards and you gotta,
01:14you're making a devil's compromise ever like all the time are going to be weak versus the pass,
01:20or are we going to be weak versus the run last year in that week 18 game?
01:25It felt like just watching it again the other day that the, the linebackers,
01:31the way they were being coached in that game was almost like, you're going to have to concede the
01:34run a little bit. We got, uh, you gotta, cause the Texans linebackers last year were very eager
01:39to stop the run. It was one of the reasons that the Texans got just gored by the play action at
01:45times. So in that game, it looked to me like they were really instructed to be like, you just be
01:51sure about it. Don't bite on play action. And ultimately it was the right strategy,
01:57but it's a tough one because it involves conceding a little bit, kind of like the old,
02:02you know, the hall of fame game plan that Belichick had when he was with the giants
02:05versus the bills in the super bowl, where they just basically said, you know what?
02:09Let Thurman Thomas eat. And Thurman Thomas might rush for a hundred and however many yards he did,
02:15but we got to limit the passing game. That's, that's the bind that D'Amico and those linebackers
02:19are in right now. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's like you said, Jonathan Taylor ran for like
02:24200 yards in that second game against them in week 18. They stopped him when they needed to
02:29though. They did stop him when they needed to. They slowed him down in the fourth quarter.
02:32Um, yeah, from what you're saying, it sounds like if we're looking for pressure points on
02:37the Texans defense, Jalen Petrie under a tremendous amount of pressure this weekend,
02:41probably Henry Toa Toa, right? I mean, that's, that's, that's going to be a kill spot for
02:45Shane Steichen, right? Yeah. The linebackers. And for these purposes, I consider Jalen Petrie,
02:50a linebacker and nickel that that's the really hard. And now this is where, this is where the
02:55film study, the previous experience playing against them, all of those things are that
03:00you've just, if you can, if you, if you watch enough reps of it, you can start to get a feel
03:06for hopefully some tells or just indicators about, about just how, um, whether it's,
03:14whether it's runner pass, just the run past indicators, Elshire, Elshire is really good
03:18at that stuff. Um, the other thing that Colts do really well, they tow the line on illegal
03:24offensive lineman downfield and their RPO game. And like, there was one play in the preseason where
03:30they got away with it. The offensive, the left guard was about three and a half yards downfield
03:35on a pass and they didn't get flagged for it. If I'm D'Amico, that's part of this game too,
03:40is being sure that the refs are calling that clean, that you're, you're pointing out when,
03:45so, uh, like, I don't want to be overly technical here, but those of you just,
03:51the reason that offensive lineman downfield is illegal, um, is because they've got an unfair
03:56advantage when a linebacker is trying to figure out if it's runner pass. And if it looks like
04:02this guy is, if it looks like the offensive line is blocking, like it's definitely a run
04:08and that's your read, you bite on the play action. So when those guys get away with being
04:13three yards downfield instead of two, it's, you gotta, you gotta be on the officials to call that
04:18tight. Um, and the Colts are really, really good at just telling the line on it. Yep.
04:23Um, Nick Casario joined us, uh, over the last hour or so here. I thought his answer about
04:28Kamari Lassiter was interesting. Like at the beginning of camp, they had CJ Henderson and
04:33Jeff Okuda on the outside and then Kamari Lassiter on the inside, which is where all
04:37the experts were saying, you know, he's, he only runs a four, six. And so he can probably,
04:43he's going to be at his ceiling. He's probably gotta be a slot corner, you know? So we'll see
04:48how this goes. And then all of a sudden he starts getting reps on the outside in practice. Like, Oh,
04:54okay. This guy's just as good, if not better than these other guys that we have, right?
04:58Right. Yeah. It's like, that was like found money early on in the spring activities.
05:03Yeah. And I think the consistency and the intelligence is everything that they were
05:06hoping for when it came to, okay, this guy comes out of the university of Georgia, Kirby smart,
05:11does a really good job of coaching these guys, wrapping them. And are they going to be prepared
05:16to, to play in the NFL earlier? Same way, you know, they've, they feel about defensive players
05:21from a Nick Saban team for years and years, but you got to see him actually do it. I think that's
05:28usually the thing that keeps a rookie from playing earlier is because a defensive coordinator feels
05:35like, well, this guy's going to get me fired. Okay, great. He's going to have 10 interceptions,
05:39but he's also going to have 10 blown coverages that lead to touchdowns. And we might be,
05:44he might be hell on a highlight reel, but he's going to get me fired.
05:48That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. And if he gets 10 interceptions, he ain't going anywhere
05:52because everybody looks at the 10 interceptions, you know what I mean? He'll give up 10 interceptions
05:57and 15 touchdowns, but the he'll make the pro bowl because of the interception. So there's no
06:02incentive. It's a Trayvon, a young Trayvon digs a dynamic, you know, where man, the guy gambles a
06:09lot. So that's what, that's what you're monitoring is. All right. Can I trust this guy? Sure. We know
06:14he can make plays, but can I trust him? And I think that they, they just felt very early in the
06:19process that Kamari Lassiter could be trusted. So it wasn't, I didn't seem like it even was much
06:24of a decision. No, no. I mean, he, that's, that's yeah. That's why I asked the question. Cause he's
06:28been the number one cornerback from like the second week of OTAs. Like it's, it hasn't,
06:33it hasn't wavered at all. It's got to help too. When you just get better players on the team
06:38overall, it's got to help you just get so much of a better gauge of what you actually have.
06:41I know that they talk about, you know, Nick and D'Amico talk about Lassiter. Well,
06:44he's in Georgia. So he's going against the best there is to offer. Yeah. In college,
06:48but he's going against digs and, and, and go and tank Dell in practice every day and holding his
06:55own by the way. And that's where you can really go. Okay. This is, this is what he's going to see
06:59on Sundays over here. And which by the way, also, he's got a lot of experience going against AD
07:04Mitchell, the rookie, rookie receiver for the Colts. Cause he was at Georgia. That's right.
07:09Nick, when they drafted Stingley, they mentioned, I can't remember if it was Nick who mentioned it
07:14or whoever, whomever else, but you know, watching the practice film of Derek Stingley versus Jamar
07:20Chase. And those guys was actually a factor in their scouting process there. I think they just
07:24felt like they had more good Intel and info on Derek Stingley versus marquee dudes than they
07:30did on sauce gardeners. So they probably just felt more comfortable with it. Jamar Chase and
07:36Justin Jefferson were the wide receivers on that team. Yeah. Yeah. So you're going to be
07:40the two highest paid guys. He had a lot of reps for some really good wide receivers in college.
07:46Yeah. That's, that's probably one of the, the non-marquee match Kamari Lassiter was very under
07:54discussed in the national media amongst rookies who are having good years, partly because look,
07:58he only played one preseason game and Daniel Jones or Brian Dayball or whomever else they,
08:04they didn't test Kamari Lassiter in that game. So I think that we here locally in Houston probably
08:10have seen and talked a lot more about Kamari Lassiter than anybody else. When I'm, when I'm
08:15reading previews of this Colts game, I, I don't expect to see a whole lot of discussion about
08:20Kamari Lassiter in there, but he really is a huge, he's going to get tested. You know,
08:26Shane Sikon is no dummy and he knows what he obviously knows exactly what Derek Stingley
08:32is capable of, but he's, he doesn't know about Kamari Lassiter and what he's going
08:37to look like as a pro. So he's going to get tested.