Will the Real Houston Texans Please Stand Up?
The 2019 Houston Texans has been a tale of two teams and the main question is, Who are the real Texans?
Less than a week after toppling the historically dominant New England Patriots on Sunday Night Football, the Houston Texans went out and laid an egg against the DenverBroncos. You can blame a myriad of factors, most obviously a lack of urgency, but this game was an utter disappointment.
After allowing a mind-numbing 31 points in the first half to a Broncos team that had failed to post even 25 points all season, the Houston defense looked worn down. Deshaun Watson was able to formulate a mini-rally at the end of the second half, but to no avail.
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The team currently has a tiebreaker over the Tennessee Titans as both teams sit at 8-5 on the year, yet the two teams square off twice in the next three weeks to see who will take the division crown.
The real question is this, Which Texans team is going to show up? The one who stymied future Hall of Famer Tom Brady into one of his worst games of the season, or the team that allowed a rookie quarterback to carve them up like a Thanksgiving turkey?
When comparing notes between the two games, it’s easy to see where things went wrong early on yet difficult to identify which version of the team is likely to appear on a given Sunday.
Watson has churned out a Pro Bowl caliber season all year, despite his occasional struggles against elite defenses, yet is one of the more consistent players on the team and in the league. You can point fingers at the defense and the secondary in particular due to a rash of injuries, but all full strength players like Bradley Roby and Justin Reid showed what they were capable of in primetime.
Let’s look at the two very different performances we saw in the past two weeks and analyze which variation of the team is more closely aligned with what we should expect.