The Houston Texans offense was truly terrible on Sunday. The quick loss of Nico Collins to start the contest, which followed the loss of Tank Dell from the week before, surely didn't help things. The Texans star rookie C.J. Stroud has gotten a lot of love, but few people outside of us have also pointed out that Stroud's success has come from having Dell and Collins to throw to.
The relationship is very sympatico and no quarterback ever excels without the help of those around him, and Stroud proved that in spades on Sunday. Every quarterback needs help to perform and not having Dell and Collins really hampered the offense. It also didn't help that DeMeco Ryans threw the ball as much as he did with his two best receivers out, and his feature back Devin Singletary ripping up the defense as he was.
Those two situations compounded to really hamper the offense. Some players still played well, others, not so much. So these are the three worst performing players from this past week's loss to the Jets, as according to Pro Foottball Focus (PFF).
C.J. Stroud - 42.9
Stroud, even before his injury, looked bad. He wasn't pushing the ball down the field well enough, he was getting hit a lot because he was holding onto the ball too long, and he was largely just ineffective. Granted, there's reasons for that. The Jets defense was probably the best he faced all year, his offensive line is mediocre at best and he was missing two game-changing weapons. So, we get why Stroud strugglged.
Eric Saubert - 41.8
It's hard for the backup tight end to mess up as badly as Eric Saubert has, and while it's probably happened before, I certainly haven't seen a player that scored a single-digit rating from PFF before. The folks at Pro Football Focus gave Saubert a 9.2 for pass blocking. Considering it was hard to tell if Stroud was about to step on grass, or a Jets' defensive player, it's probably fair that Saubert and the offensive line around him got such a terrible grade.
Noah Brown - 35.6
Noah Brown has looked lost the last two weeks and his PFF score really helps solidify that. He's gone from the team's third best receiver to being someone you can't really rely on right now. Especially with the losses to Dell and Collins, the Texans are going to need Brown to step up and take over some games, as he did earlier in the year.