Houston Texans: Bill O’Brien says team needs to ‘get better quickly’

Houston Texans head coach Bill O’Brien knows improvement is needed fast.

Some feel the Houston Texans are on the verge of breaking out of their losing ways once the entire team gets on the same page, while others believe there is much work to be done before success happens.

What we do know is the Houston Texans had to face two of the very best quarterbacks and defenses in the NFL, and two of the very best overall teams in the AFC, leaving the franchise knowing where they stand against two teams who have set a very high bar in the conference.

The Texans aren’t on the same tier as the Kansas City Chiefs or the Baltimore Ravens right now, but there are still 14 more regular-season games to get to that point. Early turnovers hurt the Houston Texans and put them behind against the Ravens on Sunday, resulting in a 33-16 loss.

Following the game, Texans head coach Bill O’Brien was asked what his message was to his team after the loss, and here was his response in comments provided by NFL Communications:

"“We have to get better quickly. We have to — in all areas. We have to coach better. We have to play better. It’s a long season. We have to get better very quickly here, though. We go to Pittsburgh, so we have to really work hard this week to improve and we need to play a lot better than we’ve been playing against Pittsburgh.“There’s really, we don’t have any choice, right? We don’t have any choice. We’ve got to get back to work here and really work hard to improve.”"

The Houston Texans head coach was correct. Though the feeling is the team played better, it wasn’t a good enough overall team performance/ Defensive coordinator’s Anthony Weaver‘s defensive play calling was pretty solid, but the offense of Tim Kelly and his play calling seemed a bit like O’Brien’s play calling, which isn’t that fun and — as we all saw by the 16 points scored — not great for scoring points.

Houston Texans News: Rushing game needs more carries and production

On offense, David Johnson had just 11 rushes for 34 yards, and he averaged just 3.1 yards per carry. The Houston Texans were out-rushed 230-51 as they had 37 rushing attempts, including a 30-yard rush for a touchdown by Mark Ingram.

The Houston Texans allowed that big play, and it did hurt the flow on defense. It seemed to knock some of the wind out of the entire team as well, but O’Brien is correct in saying they need to play better at Pittsburgh.

It isn’t the end of the season if the Texans do go 0-3, but they really could use a win in Week 3, because this season in the AFC South they are already trailing all three division foes, and too many losses won’t be good for a team still getting used to playing the same offense as a unit.

The Houston Texans were also 3-for-9 on third down, so just one or two more conversions would do wonders for this offense. To be honest, having such an improvement against a team like the Steelers isn’t such an easy task as they are 2-0 with wins over the New York Giants and Denver Broncos, allowing a total of 37 points in those wins.

As this week is set to begin, the Houston Texans need to learn from this loss, get better like O’Brien said, and keep trying to earn their first victory of the season.