Despite being three-point underdogs at home, the Texans upset the Los Angeles Chargers in the wild-card round of the playoffs Saturday. Payne and Pendergast go over what stood out from the game.
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00:00Here's C.J. Stroud at the 47-yard line of Houston, ready to take a knee. He does. It's over! The Texans blow out the Chargers on wild-card weekend, 32-12, and they move on to the divisional round.
00:15What a playoff performance! Four interceptions. The Texans, winners. A game we will never forget.
00:24Mark Vandermeer on the call. Texans, 32, Chargers, 12, and I will pile on with everybody else, including D'Amico Ryans after that game, where I say to you, Seth Payne, how about that bye week?
00:38How about that bye week? How about that bye week?
00:40Yeah, man.
00:42Yeah, this was – what a great – what a fun game. And even when the Texans were down and the game seemed like it was at its drunkest, and even when I had almost zero expectation of the Texans winning, there was a point there before the – what I'm going to call a designed fake fumble, where everything turned around, that I felt – I started to feel like, you know what, man, the way the defense is playing, they took a couple punches earlier.
01:12They took a punch to the chin and then a punch to the nose on the first couple of possessions, but I thought there was a chance that, man, maybe this will be one of those games where the offense doesn't do anything at all, but the Texans' defense gets a couple of turnovers.
01:28And it ended up delivering to a huge – the offense showed up, and they turned – I mean, Justin Herbert's – he's never thrown more than a single interception in a game.
01:38No, no, he's never thrown more than two. Never thrown more than two in a game, yeah.
01:42Somebody wrote it wrong in the Chronicle.
01:44Yeah.
01:44So – but this year, he didn't throw more than a single interception in a game. He threw three interceptions all season long. He gets four interceptions. That was just – that was awesome, man. That was so much fun, eventually.
01:59Yeah.
01:59It wasn't fun at first.
02:01No.
02:01It was a whole lot of fun eventually.
02:03Well, it was fun, and I think, like, to me – OK, there's a lot to unpack here.
02:08Do it in the next 90 seconds.
02:10You said – I think it was after the Dolphins game in Week 15, where the offense was really bad. I mean, honestly, I know they won the game, and D'Amico was still trying to talk them up a little bit, like they did some good things, but the offense was not good in that game.
02:25But Derek Stingley had the two picks. The defense turned the Dolphins over four times, and I remember coming in the Monday afterwards, and you said it right out of the chute. You said, this might be the formula for this team.
02:35Like, if this team – if this team is going to make a run in the playoffs, the formula is probably going to be the defense making plays and setting the offense up.
02:45And to a degree, that's what this game was, except the offense finally showed up in the second half of this football game.
02:51The first drive of the game looked like the beginning of the Ravens game.
02:55The first drive for the Chargers in that game, I mean, they were just slicing and dicing going down the field, and the biggest thing the defense did early in this game was get two third down stops.
03:05The Chargers didn't have a third down until they had a third and one on the first drive and fully fought a call to get in backfield and stop them.
03:13So it's a fourth and three instead of a fourth and one. You know, like, it's a no-brainer field goal attempt.
03:18Mechie turns the ball over on the first play from scrimmage offensively, and the Texans get a sack and a stop there.
03:24I thought early in the game, holding them to two field goals, which stood until the game was out of reach, was absolutely huge.
03:32And kudos to the, and we'll get to this in a second, what triggered the offense.
03:35But I think, to me, like, I come in this morning and I say, man, this was a deluxe version of the formula that you were talking about after that Dolphins game.
03:43Because the offense did show up in this game.
03:45They had over 400 yards of offense.
03:47And to me, like, the emotional part of it coming in, I'm like, okay, I don't care how we got here.
03:52This is how I expected to feel after the wild card round of the playoffs, say, at the beginning of the season.
03:57Like, with a little bit of confidence that you can go on the road and play with Kansas City on Saturday.
04:01Right, you've got to do, look, okay, you're going to have to turn, you're going to have to try to turn the Chiefs over at some point.
04:06Yeah, and look, even if it hadn't ended up being a landslide victory like this, even if they hadn't picked off Justin Herbert four times,
04:14the really encouraging thing on a more, like, kind of substantial part of it was that, hey, the defense kept the offense in the game.
04:23Or the defense kept them in the game when it could have easily gone sideways.
04:28After that John Mechie fumble, I mean, it could have been disastrous.
04:32And the fact that they stood up in that moment and then just kept it a 6-0 game when it felt like it should have been 21-0.
04:41Yeah.
04:42That was really good.
04:43The other thing, multiple different players talked about Aziz Alshire's influence as a leader on this team.
04:51And I told you guys that, you know, they were kind of talking about what kind of defense they wanted to be going into this season.
04:59And Aziz said, we want to be the kind of defense that can take a punch and it doesn't affect you.
05:05You just keep fighting.
05:06And that's exactly what that was.
05:08That was just a gutsy, gutsy effort by the entire team.
05:12Offensively, I also did like that, man, the offensive line, they had some rough moments.
05:20Many of them similar to what we've seen this year where they just can't pick up games, like all those kinds of things.
05:27But they counterbalanced it at least.
05:30They ran the hell out of the ball in the second half.
05:32Not just with Joe Mixon heroics, but with actual blocking and actual lanes and holes and all of that.
05:39So there was, there was a lot to hang here.
05:42This wasn't like, doesn't feel like a flukish victory.
05:44No, at all.
05:45It feels like a crazy, crazy victory, but it doesn't feel flukish.
05:49Because they made a lot of mistakes, too.
05:50I mean, if you had told me before the game, like, you know, I like doing that thing, Seth, where I said,
05:55if you just tell me five things about this game blindly, do I think they would have won the game?
06:00And if you had told me before the game that they would have fumbled on each of their first possessions of each half,
06:05the first play of the game offensively, and then Mixon fumbled in the red zone,
06:09if you had told me they would have fumbled on their first possessions of each half,
06:13given up an 86-yard touchdown pass, and had 80-plus yards in penalties,
06:19I would have said, they'd probably lose this game.
06:21They won by 20.
06:23You know, that's crazy.
06:24You're right, it was an absolutely crazy game.
06:25Now, we got to talk, and that last drive you're talking about when they ran the ball,
06:28they possessed the ball at the end of the game.
06:30We haven't seen it here.
06:31The defense has been the one that's had to close out games at the end of the season.
06:3614 plays, 74 yards.
06:38They held the ball for nearly seven minutes and scored a touchdown at the end of it.
06:42That's a biggie.
06:43You had a closeout.
06:44Huge.
06:45That was a sight for sore eyes.
06:47Yeah.
06:48And one that I can't remember if we had a closeout drive like that by the Texans offense at any point this year.
06:54Well, the Colts came in week one.
06:55That was it.
06:56Yeah, that's right.
06:57That's it.
06:58So, yeah, that part was really cool.
07:02And even on the Ladd-McConkie, the Ladd-McConkie one,
07:07it took the breath out of the stadium, obviously, for a little bit,
07:10but then you immediately counter-punched.
07:12But that play specifically, the weird thing about it was Caelan Bullock was in position to make a play.
07:19They were covered, yeah.
07:20And Caelan Bullock is a guy that knows how to go up after the football.
07:23He kind of pulled what we saw last week where he's just kind of sitting waiting for the ball to come down.
07:31Oh, yeast.
07:32Yeah, yeast.
07:33He kind of pulled the yeast.
07:34Yeah.
07:36Without realizing that there was a Ladd-McConkie, the guy you shouldn't lose track of.
07:40Yeah.
07:41So that, you know, in hindsight, with the victory, I look at it, I'm like, all right, you know what,
07:45they had it covered properly.
07:47Caelan Bullock just kind of made a rookie mistake on it.
07:49Yeah, on third and 28.
07:50That was wild.
07:51But they win the game by 20.
07:52So, you know, it is what it is.
07:55The play that flipped this game.
07:56Thank you for remembering yeast's name.
07:58The play that flipped, number 25, the play that flipped this game,
08:01and might have flipped the postseason for C.J. Stroud.
08:04Texans down 6-0.
08:06It's third and forever.
08:08This is at the beginning of a 99-yard drive.
08:12They spent four minutes jimmy jacking around inside their own 25-yard line,
08:18like getting penalties, running the ball.
08:20Like they were in a swamp.
08:22Was it 10 yards and 10 plays?
08:25It was something crazy like that.
08:27It was absurd.
08:28It was nuts.
08:29Titus had a tripping penalty that put it back.
08:32It was wild.
08:33So, it's third and 16, and they're inside their own.
08:36After having been second and 20.
08:38Yeah.
08:39Or 25.
08:40Yeah, and they're inside their own 10-yard line thereabouts, and this happens.
08:44Stroud calls for the ball, and the ball goes through Stroud.
08:47He picks it up, scrambles out to the right side.
08:50Can he get rid of it?
08:51Airs it out downfield and caught at the 45-yard line
08:55and taken to the 50-yard line.
08:57X marks the spot.
08:59An amazing play for the Texans on third and long.
09:03It was undoubtedly one of the most, if not the most important plays of the game.
09:07If they go on to do more this postseason, beat the Chiefs
09:11and then see whatever happens, it'll be looked back at
09:13as one of the most important plays certainly of this whole season
09:16and maybe in the history of the team if they go further than they've ever been.
09:20That play, as I said before, they were just swamping around
09:24in their own territory for four minutes.
09:26They went down in about a minute and scored a touchdown,
09:28got the ball back, and then scored a field goal.
09:31They scored 10 points in the last two minutes of the game after this play.
09:35If you saw it, you know it was CJ Stroud.
09:38The ball goes through his hands, so it was his fault.
09:41I said this in the postgame.
09:42He said it afterwards.
09:44He was checking the defense.
09:46Let's hear from CJ.
09:47Here's CJ's thoughts on that play.
09:49Yeah, you know, even when I made the play, I was kind of mad at myself.
09:53My eyes, I didn't look at the snap, so it just went straight through my hands.
09:57So I'm looking.
09:59I'm trying to see the defense, and it went through my hands.
10:01Luckily, it bounced right back up to me, and I tried to just save the play.
10:05Hush did a good job.
10:06I trusted me, and I trust him, so he kept on the move.
10:10After we made the completion, I looked at the sideline.
10:13Everybody was turned up, so that turned me up because I was still kind of mad at myself.
10:17But, yeah, those are the type of plays that change momentum,
10:21and that's when a team can rally around plays like that.
10:25So, you know, shout out to Hush for making a great instinctual play,
10:28and I'll just try to do my best to save the play.
10:30That play undoubtedly flipped the game, and it flipped CJ Stroud
10:34because before that play, he was 9 for 16, 83 yards, a horrible interception,
10:40and a passer rating of just over 44.
10:43Then he had that play, big 34-yard catch.
10:47After that play, CJ Stroud was 12 for 16 for 164 yards.
10:52He threw the touchdown to Nico Collins.
10:54His passer rating was nearly 130.
10:57He averaged 10.3 yards per attempt, which 8 is exceptional.
11:01He was at 10.3.
11:03He was using his legs after that.
11:05He had a 27-yard scramble on the next drive that felt like he was shot out of a cannon.
11:10You cannot overstate what this play meant to this game.
11:15I told you that sometimes as a lineman, I'm guessing this is frowned upon these days,
11:21but you don't feel right until you kind of take a knock in the noggin,
11:24like you headbutt somebody before the game or something just to try to get it going.
11:29It felt like it puts you into that.
11:32It felt like that play put him in that mode, and it ended up being also.
11:36We talk about it was seven plays that they had taken to advance 10 yards, 11 yards.
11:43They started off at the 1.
11:45They ended up at the 12 after seven plays.
11:49Because of that, though, you also gave the defense a break
11:52because the defense had been on the field forever in that half,
11:55and you're just feeling like at some point, man,
11:57they can't be out there without at some point the dam breaking.
12:02So it helped in that regard, too.
12:04It was almost like all the negatives turned into a positive on that play because of that.
12:09And you're right.
12:10With C.J. running, you know, C.J.
12:13And he also talked about there was an opportunity earlier in that game
12:17where it looked like, boy, he could have run the ball.
12:20But I think sometimes with C.J., it's weird,
12:22and you see that with young quarterbacks sometimes now.
12:25They've gotten all this advice from these older guys their whole life about how, like,
12:29hey, be a pure passer, be a pure passer, be a pure passer.
12:34You don't have to be a – that NFL doesn't exist anymore.
12:38There aren't – there are very, very few stationary dudes, man.
12:43Like, you got to – the game has changed to the point where when the easy yardage is there,
12:48nobody second guesses Pat Mahomes for running like he does.
12:52Yeah.
12:53It's part of the game.
12:54You got to just let it flow to you.
12:56He had two huge runs in this game, C.J.
12:58Did the 27-yarder that flipped the field position to go get three.
13:01That run got them the three points.
13:03And then the scramble on third down that should have been a first down
13:06but set up fourth and one, and then he sneaked it on the next play.
13:10C.J. Stroud was absolute from late in the second quarter on.
13:14He was – that was 2023 C.J.
13:162024 C.J. let the ball go through his hands.
13:192023 C.J. picked it up and found Xavier Hutchinson.
13:22It was outstanding.
13:23Or 2025 C.J.
13:24Hopefully.
13:25Let's hope so, right?
13:26Did they play – was last week's game in 2025?
13:30It was.
13:31Played a good game there too.
13:32He did, yeah, he did.
13:332025 C.J. has been a different dude.
13:34C.J. 3.0, yeah.