DeMeco Ryans has a wild take on Azeez Al-Shaair's hit on Trevor Lawrence

The Houston Texans continue to be in the news and not for a good reason. Azeez Al-Shaair's late hit on Trevor Lawrence during the Texans' win over the Jacksonville Jaguars is a huge talking point in NFL circles and Al-Shaair has been suspended three games for the cheap shot.

When speaking to the media right after the game, head coach DeMeco Ryans expressed disappointment in Al-Shaair and noted that his staff doesn't coach that way. Well, Ryans seemed to have flipped a switch when holding his press conference on Monday afternoon, seemingly blaming Trevor Lawrence for what happened in Jacksonville on Sunday.

“We stand behind Azeez and everything that came from that. Of course, he unfortunately hit the quarterback but it's two-fold, right? A lot of the quarterbacks in this day and age, they try to take advantage of the rule where they slide late and they try to get an extra yard."

Ryans then went into how this impacts the defender and his approach of getting the quarterback down.

"Now, you're a defender, a lot of onus is on the defender, whether it's on the sideline or it's on the quarterback, you don't know what a guy is thinking. You don't know if a guy's staying up and he's continuing to run. You don't know. And then you get a late slide and you hit the guy.”

Ryans also noted that while it's unfortunate that Lawrence got hurt, he should bear some of the blame because "If we're sliding, we have to get down." This isn't a great look from Ryans, especially considering Al-Shaair's history with these types of dirty plays. If this were a on-off, I might be willing to just call this an unfortunate part of the sport but Al-Shaair is not a first-time offender here with taking unnecessary hard hits.

DeMeco Ryans' says Trevor Lawrence needs to learn to slide better

Ryans then threw gasoline on the fire by blaming the Jaguars players for the fight, stating that they overreacted.

“Their team overreacted, pushed our guy, dragging our guy to the sideline so that’s uncalled for on that side. We have to be better on the sidelines as well with both teams."

I'm not sure that Ryans would share these same sentiments if a Jaguars player hit C.J. Stroud in the same manner. He also probably wouldn't have a problem with his players sticking up for Stroud if the roles were reversed. Ryans' comments are going to be criticized and they should be. I get having your players' backs but blaming Lawrence in any way here and saying his teammates overreacted to the hit is in poor taste.