Insight - Houston Chronicle Classroom - Texans vs Saint

            Sometimes the Houston Texans are one of the most interesting football teams in the league to watch play. Other time watching them is like continually beating yourself over the head with a frying pan. Last weeks games would be described as the latter.

            The Texans got off to a bright start, quickly pushing their way down the field to score the first touchdown of the game, which quickly quieted the enthusiastic fans in the stadium.

            Every drive after the first until the second half resulted in a field goal for the Texans, which would come to haunt them in the second half. The first half ended with the Saints quickly pushing down the field and brought the score to 16-10 Texans.

            In the second half, the Saints came out firing on all cylinders, scoring a second touchdown, taking the lead for the first time in the game.

            In the fourth quarter, the Texans truly fell apart. Although the defense was doing it’s best under the circumstances of playing against Drew Brees, they were unable to prevent him from making quick and efficient passes to his receivers, which caused the Texans to give 454 total yards, currently the worst in the season.

            The defense is not the part of the team truly at blame for the loss though. This true offender is Matt Schaub, who when the game was on the line, choked, and failed to move the ball and run the clock, leaving the saints offense with ample time to make a fourth quarter comeback that only the Texans can give up.

            This game was disappointingly similar to the sort of games we saw last season when the Texans ended with a 6-10 record. Sure one can excuse this loss by saying that the Saints are a Super Bowl caliber team, but that does not excuse blowing the game the way the Texans did this week.

            Now the question is whether or not the Texans are ready to play the Pittsburgh Steelers, who after having a rocky start losing to the Baltimore Ravens 35-7, came back to blow out the Seattle Seahawks 24-0 and barely squeeze out a win against the Indianapolis Colts. It is debatable whether or not the Steelers can field a team better than the Texans, but as we have seen in the many years with the Texans, anything is possible.

Source: http://my.hsj.org