What We Learned From Week 1

The Texans absolutely steamrolled the Colts this week after a dominating 34-7 victory. The game would have most likely of been a complete shutout if Ben Tate didn’t cough up the ball inside the Texans 30 yard line and gave the Colts amazing field position.

We’ve learned a couple of things about the Texans (and Colts) during this opening game of the 2011 season.

1. Wade Phillips is amazing. He has incredibly improved on what was last year one of the worst defenses in the NFL, hell we even got a few sacks in (3 for 25 yards to be exact), but…
2. The defense still looks like it could use some work. I mean, maybe its me and I’m not giving Kerry Collins enough credit, but Kerry Collins should NOT of thrown for almost 200 yards against us, but its a vast improvement over last year’s opener where Peyton through for almost 500 yards in one game. Speaking of Peyton,
3. The Colts CANNOT win without Peyton Manning. I mean sure, they may be able to win a game or two, but they will never be the same team without him. The offense wasn’t able to get anything done. Their longest drive of the game was 44 yards long and still resulted in a missed field goal.
4. The Texans are still a very well balanced team offensively, our aerial attack seemed to have a few kinks with two interceptions thrown by Matt Schaub, although one of them was due to an unfortunate tipped pass to Andre Johnson. Even with that, Matt Schaub still threw for 220 yards and a touchdown. Our running game is still a force to be reckoned with as the Texans gained 167 yards on the ground, even without Arian Foster, which brings me to my next point…
5. The Texans have some SERIOUS depth at the running back position. Now the Texans drafted Ben Tate in the second round last season because they knew he would be special, boy were they right. In addition to that, we also have Derrick Ward who was an extremely solid number 2 running back last year.
6. Jacoby Jones can still get it done in the special teams and can possibly be a good number 2 receiver which he will have to be considering…
7. Keving Walter will be out for 10-12 weeks with a broken shoulder which means that someone will have to step up into that number 2 role which is scary considering that our depth at wide receiver is really that good. Besides Kevin Walter and Jacoby Jones, we don’t really have a real number 2 receiver, and it’s kind of hard to even call Kevin Walter or Jacoby Jones real number 2 receivers especially with Andre Johnson. Everyone knows that Andre is the star and that the ball is most likely going his way. Our other receivers simply seem to be there in case they are double covering Andre.

This season looks extremely promising for the Texans, but I am still reserving judgement until we play a team with a real proven quarterback, not Kerry Collins. So I’ll be waiting for week 3 of the regular season when we play at New Orleans to see just how good this Texans team really is.