Following what was certainly their most noteworthy win of the 2025 season to date, Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans could've stepped up to the podium on both Sunday night in Kansas City and back home in Houston on Monday afternoon and delivered an impassioned defense of why his team deserves far more respect than they've gotten. Even though it would've been perfectly justified, this isn't the way that Ryans handled his post-game media obligations. Instead, he used that time to provide a thoughtful and tremendously self-aware analysis of his football team.
When asked about his team's defensive effort in the 20-10 win against the three-time defending AFC champions, Ryans lavished the Texans with praise, saying, "I can’t say enough about the effort from our defense," before at least attempting to do so, noting the contributions of Kamari Lassiter, Jalen Pitre, Tommy Togiai and Walter Payton Man of the Year Club Winner Azeez Al-Shaair.
This isn't anything abnormal for the Texans, though. Their thrashing of the Kansas City Chiefs offense -- and make no mistake, it was a thrashing... Patrick Mahomes was held to career lows in points scored in a home game (10 points), passer rating (19.8), and completion percentage (42.4) -- seems to be the culmination of a steady build throughout the season, one in which it's become clear that on any given Sunday, you could find a half dozen Houston players defensively who played at an All-Pro level.
“For our defense, there are high expectations within our group," Ryans explained. "That’s the only thing that really matters. There’s nothing about an outside expectation. Our guys play for each other. It means a lot to them, each and every snap. They’re a tight group and they go out and they know how to play together. It’s not about one man making a play. Everybody’s excited, they’re fired up on whoever makes a play because that’s how they play. They swarm, they play relentlessly, and it’s beautiful to watch.”
What's not nearly as beautiful to watch has been the Texans offense, which has appeared to be a league average group at best and something far worse than that on their worst nights. On Sunday night, it was a subpar effort for a group that hopes to be playing into February, but the harsh truth is, even if the Texans defense continues to play at this level from now until the season ends, the Texans offense still needs to pick up the slack if this team hopes to make a run for the Lombardi Trophy.
On Sunday night, it's not as if the Texans offense actively hurt the team's chances of winning. They didn't turn the ball over, Nico Collins had over 100 yards receiving, and they did enough to win the time of possession battle. But CJ Stroud completed under 50 percent of his passes, the running game produced just 2.6 yards per carry, and the entire unit continued to lack the pop that they've desperately been missing all season long.
"'A lot of things we need to improve offensively," Ryans told reporters on Monday, per Aaron Wilson of KPRC2 Houston. "We need to operate much faster. It's not good enough for us. We have to operate more efficiently and more urgently on that side of the football. Lot of room for improvement there and we need to see that improvement very quickly."
Fortunately, over these last four weeks, Houston's defense has been able to do the heavy lifting, holding each of the Texans' last four opponents to under 20 points. But just because the league's best scoring defense has held firm all season long, it doesn't mean they won't need the support of the opposite side of the ball just to keep their Playoff hopes alive over the next four weeks.