In his press conference with the media yesterday, Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans made it a point to mention how the offensive side of the football needed to "start fast" to give them their best of success throughout the season.
Being prompted by a media member on what his expectations are for this year's campaign, Ryans specifically stated this regarding the early goings of the schedule,
"These first games of the season are always tricky games to prepare for. Tricky games when it comes to, you know, how the games go. It can go a lot of different ways. But, for us as a team for the past few seasons that I've been here, for us to get off to a really good start, it's going to take us starting fast on offense. When we've done well in our season opener, we play well on offense. So, it starts there. Defense has to do a great job as well of being the strength, being the backbone of our team. But the offense, we jump out, we play fast, that'll be the key for us."
This statement from the fourth-year head coach now puts more of the the onus squarely on the offensive side of the football to elevate if the organization wants to reach the historic heights that they've never reached before.
DeMeco Ryans places responsibility on the offense to start fast in 2026 to help the Houston Texans reach new heights
It's not a stretch to say that Houston's 0-3 start in 2025 could be mainly attributed to the abysmal play of the offense early on. Scoring 9 points in week one, 19 points in week two and 10 points in week three respectively, Houston's offense as a whole averaged a measly 12.7 in that stretch, along with 267 total yards per game.
Making it worse was the fact that the defense' elite play made sure that Houston only lost by one score in each contest (five points in week one, one point in week two, seven points in week three). Thus, if offensive coordinator Nick Caley and his unit could've produced anything more in the first month of the season, the Texans could've begun the year with 1-2 wins out of the gate instead of having to climb out of that 0-3 hole or the remainder of 2025-2026.
In week one's specifically, Houston has averaged only 15.7 points per game in the three seasons that Ryans has been head coach, with the highest output being their 29 points in their victory against the Indianapolis Colts to begin the 2024 season. They scored only nine points each in the other two contests, which shows a tendency for poor production at an alarming rate of 66% in this scenario.
Ryans' focus is exactly where it needs to be in terms of in dentifying key causes for early season slumps. If quarterback C.J. Stroud and the offense can hit another gear--as they've been touted to be capable of all throughout the offseason--then Houston should see a reversal of fortunes as we begin the 2026 season in only five days. The Buffalo Bills will be a great early test, but Houston's offense will be the even bigger test for the totality of the campaign.
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