After the Texans lost 32-27 to the Tennessee Titans, Payne and Pendergast discuss their biggest concerns on a Reaction Monday.
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00:00I am Sean Pendergast. He is Seth Payne. How are you doing this morning, my friend?
00:04I'm, uh, I'm, I'm miserable, Sean. I'm, uh, I'm absolutely miserable. This is,
00:08you know, I, you know, I'm miserable, especially because this is exactly the kind of game
00:13where afterwards somebody that expected the Titans to win can very, very easily say,
00:18well, what'd you expect? Because really every single thing that I worried about going into
00:24this game where I said, Hey, this could be a good gauge, even though the Titans are a bad team,
00:29the Titans do some things that the Texans have struggled with. And then boom. Oh, shot plays
00:34by the offense. Yep. There you go. By the T the Titans, you know, the defense susceptible to big
00:41plays that, okay. Got that. All right. Uh, are you able to run the ball versus a team with a
00:47physically dominant defensive line? Not even close. Not even close. Lions, Vikings, the Texans
00:54have been able to do a single damn thing against them. All of Joe Mixon's powers are, uh, rendered
01:00moot or mute, whichever one's proper there. Whichever one is the worst one. Yeah. Hey,
01:05Hey, you guys have gotten bitten by injuries before. Have you fixed that? Oh, sure. We got
01:10that. No, no, you don't have that fixed whatsoever. But then the, but then the weirdest thing is damn
01:17it. I'm missing a 28 yard field goal. That's a record for ties, a record for
01:2350 plus yard field goals. Yep. Yep. For the season. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:27I'm missing one of the obvious things. I'm missing one. Oh, just not being himself.
01:32Well, and throw in penalties too, because they had nine penalties in the second half of this
01:36football game and none of them came at a time. It felt like at least where the penalties were,
01:41you know, somewhat benign, like, Oh, okay. It's a false start at midfield. It's first in 15.
01:46At our own 45. Now, no, no, no. You got illegal blindside blocks on the last drive of the game.
01:53So you were starting at the eight instead of the 27 yard line. You know, you were,
01:58you were getting holding pen. There's never a good time for a holding penalty.
02:01And this offensive line has holding penalties in it. Back to back false starts to turn a third and
02:06six into a third and 16 at midfield, you know, just think just, just, yeah. So, I mean, I'll
02:13throw you, you, you have a nice list. I'll throw the penalties in there with it as well.
02:17Like the, the procedural stuff. And this is where it all comes back on Bobby Slowik. Look,
02:22whenever you're looking at something and it's really hard to define exactly what's wrong with
02:26it. Hell yeah. Blame the manager. You walk into a restaurant and everything's just a little bit
02:30off. Like this is the worst Denny's I've ever been in fire. The manager. Yeah. Because I'll
02:35tell you what I can't take Sean. I cannot take seeing another Nico Collins, huge play called
02:42back for something damn procedural, right? Including last week with Laramie tonsil too
02:47far downfield. Simple. That's a detail. Fix that. Don't execute like a bunch of slack jawed idiots
02:54out there. You get another Nico Collins back because of a legal motion, two men in motion,
02:59all this 80 in stuff. Yeah. You're going to lose. You're going to lose versus the Titans.
03:04You're going to lose to the Jags on Sunday. If you do this stuff on the road. Oh wait,
03:09Hey, what's this team going to do in their playoffs? Do you think they'll run up against
03:12the team that has good defensive linemen at some point? Hey, do you think they might run
03:16up against a team that can kill you with shop? Where, where in the playoffs are they going to
03:22face a quarterback as good as we'll love us? You know, I just saw a hundred percent.
03:28We wondered, okay, how much could you actually learn from a game versus the Titans? We learned
03:32a lot. Yeah. They are not ready for prime time. They are regressing and getting worse as the
03:37season goes along. They've lost four of their last six games. They're not a, they're not a good
03:41football team. They're not, they're not. And here, here's the biggest, the biggest concern for me.
03:47This is by far the biggest concern is that the two biggest beacons of hope for this franchise,
03:54starting last season in training camp, where D'Amico Ryan's as the head coach and CJ Stroud
04:00is the quarterback and both, both and D'Amico asked us to put it on him and that cut we played
04:05in coming in. They are both showing serious flaws right now. I'll start with D'Amico and
04:11this is a big one. I have serious questions right now. There's a lot that comes with D'Amico Ryan's.
04:16It's really, really good. And a lot of it, we don't see on a day-to-day basis because it's
04:20the rejuvenation of the building and the franchise as a whole. And I acknowledge that those things
04:25are important. I think, I think that energy is a lot of what fueled you to getting to 10 and
04:29seven last year with a very young football team. I acknowledge that that is important and it will
04:34be important moving forward. And this is me, this is not me bailing on D'Amico Ryan's, but I have
04:38serious questions. You're talking about Seth, the list that you had are systemic things that have
04:45reared their heads all year long, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. And the solution
04:49has been to continue to trot out the same thing every week, the same scheme, the same methodology,
04:55the same mentality, the same guys every single week. I have serious questions as to whether D'Amico
05:02Ryan's is what I'll call a wartime consigliere. You see the movie, The Godfather. Remember they,
05:06they fired Tom, the lawyer who was the consigliere to, to veto Corleone because,
05:11hey man, you're a great consigliere when times are good and business is booming. But when things
05:16are going a little sideways and you need a little bit more meanness, a little more gumption, a little
05:22more, got to make some changes here. You're not the right guy. And I'm not saying fire D'Amico
05:26Ryan's, but what I am saying is there are questions right now as to whether or not he's the right kind
05:31of head coach to solve these serious problems that they have right now, because there have not
05:36been any solutions yet. The only change that's been made is cause CJ Stroud landed on top of
05:41Kenyon Green on a play that Kenyon Green screwed up. Other than that, it's the same stuff on the
05:46offensive side of the ball. People can point the finger at Bobby Slowick. This is D'Amico Ryan's
05:50problem too. And it might even be a bigger D'Amico Ryan's problem now. That's my, that's my question.
05:56Like, dude, this is the first serious thing you've had to fix with this team since you got,
06:00last year was a honeymoon. Stuff could go wrong and we didn't care. People care this year. And I
06:05think you're doing a pretty good job as a defensive coordinator. Big plays allowed, notwithstanding.
06:09By and large, this defense has been very good. The offense has not, and the offense is getting worse.
06:15And that goes to the second thing. CJ Stroud is getting worse. On your watch,
06:20the year was outplayed by Will Levis yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. It's unacceptable.
06:27It wasn't particularly close. You know, CJ's interceptions over the last few weeks have been
06:35decidedly non-rookie CJ Stroud interceptions. I think they're ones that he wouldn't have thrown
06:40in his rookie season. Yeah. This is, it's, it's getting, this is spiraling quickly.
06:47The only good thing that I heard once yesterday was when Jimmy Ward was on the post game with
06:51you and Clint. And, and he said, Hey, he, and Jimmy's about as honest as it gets. I mean,
06:57he was very, he, he was very open about his own bad play early in the game. But just that there
07:03isn't, there's no chatter from guys, you know, whining about this, whining about that, at least
07:08not that he's heard. So like the overall, the core DNA of the team, it's not like it's a bad team
07:15full of bad dudes, but they have severe under performances offensively right now. And none of
07:20it's getting better. And, and like, and the problem is when you look at the offensive lineman
07:25individually, one by one, there are plenty of good teams that have various, they'd have average
07:31offensive lineman out there, but who aren't just so routinely getting eviscerated and, or making
07:37idiotic, idiotic plays that make it. And they're just, they've shown no, okay, you're not a big
07:44physical offensive line. Then you've got to show some level of expertise and scrappiness or what
07:51have you in developing an outside zone run game. They do nothing. They do nothing. The, this was
07:57of all the things D'Amico said in the post game, I thought he was going to say,
08:01this was, this one was not one of them. This was not his finest moment as the head coach of this
08:06team. Sorry about that. This was, that was not my finest moment as a host. This was not
08:14D'Amico's finest moment. He put the game yesterday on, he put the loss on the defense yesterday.
08:19The concern for me is we need to play complimentary football, right? We play
08:24complimentary football, we win games. When we don't, we're not relying on one side, right,
08:30to carry the entire team. So whatever happens, like our offense gave us enough points to win
08:37the game. So that starts with the defense. We didn't do enough to stop them. We didn't stop
08:41the run and we didn't run the ball well and we gave up way too many points on defense. So our
08:46offense did plenty. They gave us no points in defense. We have to be able to stop them.
08:51I was shocked by that. I was shocked. I was shocked. The offense gave you 20 points. I was
08:55shocked. The offense gave you 20, but they didn't give you 27. The defense gave you seven of those.
08:59They gave you 20 points. I was, I was shocked. You don't have to point fingers at one side or
09:04the other. Like you can say that both sides, cause the defense did some good things, but yes,
09:08ultimately those backbreaking huge plays count for the defense. I totally understand.
09:14Complimentary football can be bad. Complimentary football too. It can be
09:18a thing where all sides have failed, including special teams. By the way,
09:21Kymie Fairbairn last I checked as a specialist, he shanked a 28 yard field goal. The offense
09:26got gifted 10 points, but they got gifted seven points by Jimmy Ward on a pick six.
09:32As far as the points, the offense actually scored. They had a one play drive in the first 15 seconds
09:36of the game. Thanks to Damien Pierce on an 80 yard kickoff. And then they got gifted a possession
09:42on a muffed punt where they, they, they managed four plays for seven yards and kicked a 54 yard
09:48field goal. Like that's half the points they scored. They, they, the longest, they had a 78
09:53yard drive for a touchdown. Other than that, first half per chance, it was in the first half set.
09:59Yeah. That's when it happens. It's not in the second half of any of these games.
10:02Other than that, the longest drive they had was a 55 yard drive for a field goal.
10:06Like that's, I'll tell you another one. You know, how do you point the finger at the defense
10:10as opposed to the offense? Especially when my God, Oh, is there anything worse than a Texans
10:16takeaway on defense these days? Because you can just dial up three points at best out of the
10:21offense. Like, Oh boy, here we go. It was just way to, Oh, we're going to have a six play nine
10:26yard drive somehow because at some point in offensive lineman is going to get penalized.
10:31And Oh, I'll tell you the most frustrating and infuriating one. This goes on Bobby Sloak and
10:37D'Amico is just simply that fourth and short on your own 40 decide whether to go forward or not.
10:43CJ is looking at a sideline for a call. Instead you, you roll out, you bring the punt team out
10:50there and they take a delay a game. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on?
10:55Yeah. It's it's, it's a yesterday. Not only, I mean, look, yesterday was a clown operation on,
11:01on, on every level you lost to the Tennessee Titans and we'll have us at home and we'll have
11:05us pieced you. So yeah, I'm not sitting here saying, no, it's not. It was the offense,
11:10not the defense. It was both. It was both the defense. I mean, how many times is Cody suits
11:17pointed out this yesterday? Like you're getting to the point now, how many teams have been this
11:22weird? You've lost a game where you had five interceptions on defense and still managed to
11:26lose that. You have eight sacks yesterday, seven in the first half it's seven, eight sacks yesterday
11:34and yet got pieced by the guy who had gotten sacked eight times. We'll love it. Started off.
11:39What was the streak? 11 for 11. Did it go beyond that? He was nine for nine and 11 for 12 at points
11:46that I looked at the box score. Yeah. He was 11 for 12 at halftime. So yeah, it was yeah. When he
11:51wasn't getting sacked, he was completing big chunk plays down the field. It was one or the other.