Steve Slaton scores the Texans first rushing TD of the season in the second quarter (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
The defense stepped up in a big way Sunday as the Texans dominated Oakland 29-6.
The win evens the Texans season record at 2-2 while the Raiders drop to 1-3.
The Texans run defense entered the game as the worst in the league, allowing over 200 yards per game, but the Raiders could manage only 45 yards on 22 carries.
Let's throw a party, the Texans have climbed all the way to 29th in the league against the run. At least they're headed in the right direction. I think. After all, it was the Raiders.
JaMarcus Russell was as bad as advertised, hitting only 12 of 33 passes for 128 yards and a 48.5 rating.
Russell was sacked twice, lost a fumble and was hurried all day by a herd of Texans rushers. Amobi Okoye and Mario Williams each had a sack and Williams and Brian Cushing each had three QB hurries.
Cushing came up huge again with 5 tackles, 2 assists, and a tackle for loss which resulted in a safety.
The Texans broke open a 6-3 game with a 14 point burst in a span of 2:26 in the second quarter, taking a 20-6 lead into the locker room at halftime.
The Texans struck quickly again in the third quarter, sealing the deal with 9 points in 19 seconds to make the score 29-6.
Despite the lopsided score, it could have been worse. Kris Brown missed a chip shot field goal with 8 minutes left and the Texans offense sputtered down the stretch.
After two weeks of piling up huge stats, Matt Schaub had a tough time today hitting on only 11 of 22 passes. Schaub was hurried plenty and was sacked four times.
One black cloud inside the silver lining was that the Texans offense was totally ineffective in the second half.
The Texans offense gained only 49 yards on 25 plays and had only 3 first downs in five drives following Jacoby Jones' TD with 8:41 remaining in the third quarter.
That was a perfect situation for the Texans to control the game on the ground and run the clock. But they failed miserably and the result was a very tough to watch 20 minutes of action to close out the game. Many Texans fans agreed as the stands emptied with half of the 4th quarter remaining.
Matt Turk and Shane Lechler combined for 15 punts. Nail biting football I tell ya.
The Texans were only 3 for 16 in third down efficiency but the Raiders couldn't capitalize, making it into Houston territory only three times all day and only once in the second half.
The Texans were flagged only once and came out ahead in the turnover battle. The Raiders lost three fumbles which trumped a Matt Schaub interception and a Steve Slaton fumble.
Slaton scored twice, including the Texans first rushing TD of the season.
Glover Quin was taken to the locker room with a forearm issue. More tomorrow on health status. The Texans have a number of players who have fallen ill over the past four days and that bears watching.
And finally, I don't care if Gus Johnson is 4th team CBS play by play guy. He really gets into the calls. Johnson and Steve Tasker called both Texans wins this season. Maybe they'll do the Arizona game.
Here's Johnson's call of Jacoby's kick return for TD again for those who may not have seen it. (from houstontexans.com)
Comments
AJ,
I agree, I think Gus Johnson's enthusiasm is hilarious. Also, where was Chris Brown today? I don't recall seeing him take the field. And, do you see the Texans ever getting Casey on the field? There was so much talk in the preseason about him, yet I haven't seen him much.
D looked very good today. Pitts absence was noticable on the run plays, I think. RB Brown was noticably absent, as pointed out by JT. Brown in the Doghouse for last week??
Good to see a game get out of hand in our favor for a change. I felt that Kubiak was just 'playing not to lose' in the 4th, bad idea, IMO. Our kickoff's looked weird today also.
Nice to see the D keeping the other teams RB's out of the endzone today. Keep up the good work guys.
just watched the aftergame press conf. and Brown has the flu. And Kubiak said he 'was committed' to the run in the second half, so they now have 40-41 plays to review and figure out what is going wrong with our Running game. Now I gotta hand him a 'BRILLIANT' for intentionally doing that to fix our running game problems. Taking advantage of real game situations to fix a current problem and still not lose the game. Now THAT's Head Coaching at it's best, IMO.
Jt, Brown was sick, along with a couple other guys. Sounds like it's going around the locker room.
Casey's going to have a hard time getting reps as long as Owen is healthy. Kubiak is going with Dreessen ahead of Casey but I think that's just Kubiak not puttng the rook in any tough situations as they fight through this slow start. Some of it may be blocking related. Not sure. He's getting a lot of reps on special teams.
Thanks, AJ. Although against the Raiders, these results make me look forward to my upcoming Houston trips down from the east coast. Thanks for the solid pieces.
Couple comments about the game:
(1) Why did Kubiak not get Schaub out of the game by about the middle of the 4th quarter if not sooner with that lead and the way the D was playing ?
(2) Cushing continues to impress, but I saw 2 or maybe 3 plays where they could have flagged him for personal foul including the
forearm to Russels head. Arguably he's a marginally dirty player and I can see the comparisons to Romanowski, but I think he's an important addition to the defense.
(3) Moats looked quicker than Slaton to me and I wouldn't have a problem if he got equal time with Slaton.
(4) It was a win and I'll take it but now the tough part of the schedule begins with all of these road-games coming up in October. We've won 2 games against teams with a combined record of 1-7 in 4 outings, but atleast we're at 500 though we were expecting 3-1 or better record at this time of the season.
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