The Houston Texans may be struggling to establish or define what their identity is, but if you watch enough Texans football and understand DeMeco Ryans' football upbringing, you can venture a guess as to what he wants his football team to do each and every week.
Ryans wants the Texans to play smash mouth football. He wants to dominate the time of possession, win in the trenches, establish themselves as the more physical of the two teams, and walk out of games with opponents feeling like they just lost a fist fight against a stronger and superior team.
At their best, that's exactly what the Texans can be. They have the defensive personnel in place to make life hell for any opposing offense, and on Sunday afternoon against San Francisco, that's exactly what Houston did. The 49ers didn't pick up a 1st down until there was a minute left in the 2nd quarter, and they ended the game with just 223 total yards of offense. Meanwhile, Houston's much-maligned offense put forth a well-rounded effort, finding success both on the ground and in the air.
Although the final deficit of 26-15 may not necessarily paint the picture of a one-sided beatdown, that's exactly what this game was, and after the final whistle blew, 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan wasn't afraid to admit it.
"We got beat today. Credit to them, they kicked our a**," Shanahan said bluntly during his post game press conference. "They outplayed us a lot today."
That phrase, 'Credit to them, they kicked our a**' must have DeMeco Ryans smiling ear to ear, because that's exactly what you want to hear about your football team when you're a head coach who also happens to be a former NFL linebacker who made a career of doing just that to his opponents. Even sweeter, it's coming fromthe head coach who Ryans got his start underas a defensive assistant in the NFL.
If the Texans are still searching for an identity after Week 8, then DeMeco Ryans should pull up the tape and pull up this soundbyte from Kyle Shanahan and instruct his team, 'This is the team we want to be!' And if this is the team that the Texans can consistently become, then Houston's chances of clawing their way back into the Playoff picture are actually realistic.