Houston Texans vs. Miami Dolphins: 5 Things We Learned From This Game

The Houston Texans had an impressive win on Sunday against the Dolphins, a victory which was much more hard fought than when we steam rolled the Manning-less Colt. Here are a few things we learned from that game:

#1 – The Texans run defense is not that impressive. This was a legitimate concern of mine early on in the season as we lack a true 3-4 nose-tackle to clog up the middle. Nose-tackles should be about 330-350 pound monsters. No one on our roster is close to being that big, and that showed as Daniel Thomas ran over our run defense for 100+ yards. Speaking of 100+ yards…

#2 – Ben Tate is REALLY good. For the second week in a row, Ben Tate ran for over one hundred yards in a game filling in for the STILL injured Arian Foster, which brings me to my next point…

#3 – ARIAN FOSTER IS STILL HURT! I was telling friends of mine that it is a bad idea for Foster to play this week. He is coming off a hamstring injury which is a very risky injury for a running back (as they obviously use their legs a lot). I said that he should wait at least another week. Kubiak’s playing him a little bit to slowly get him back into the game.

#4 – Matt Schaub is still a phenomenal QB. I was pretty worried after the Colts’ game when Matt Schaub threw for two interceptions, but this week Matt Schaub played amazingly, completing 21 out of 29 passes for 230 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions to both Owen Daniels and Andre Johnson.

#5 – The pass defense is improving but is not all there yet. While the Texans defense held the Dolphins to 170 yards passing, which is almost 250 fewer passing yards than the Patriots defense allowed, they still allowed some big plays that a team with a better Quarterback than Chad Henne (such as Drew Brees who we play next week) will be able to exploit.