Having written about the Houston Texans all season long, sometimes I feel like I'm running out of ways to capture the domaince of their defense. I mean, how many different ways can I lay out the stats that show how historically great this group has been before readers are like, 'Yeah dude, we get it, this defense is awesome'?
Maybe because this is a website that's tailored to Texans fans, that day will never come, but still, whenever Houston's D does something truly spectacular -- like becoming the first team since 1948 to score on a fumble recovery and an interception in the same postseason game -- or whenever someone affiliated with the unit says something particularly noteworthy, that opens up the floodgates to be able to gush about this star-studded group with a somewhat fresh persepctive.
That's why today, I'd like to thank Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans, who managed to find a new and completely unexpected way to accurately capture the havoc that this group wreaks on a weekly basis. Yet in reality, the subject of the comparison is actually 71 years old.
"It's like four Tasmanian Devils just wrecking everything that's in front of them. That's how I look at our guys," Ryans said this week, responding to a question about his team's pass rush. "They are fast. They are physical. The way they get off the ball, the way they collapse the pocket, they're a terror."
Now to be clear, I don't know for certain that Ryans was talking about the Tasmanian Devil -- the chaotic, growling cartoon character affectionately known as Taz -- and not the Tasmanian devil -- the carnivorous marsupial that's been confided to the island of Tasmania for the last 3,000 years. But until someone asks DeMeco Ryans a follow-up question about this comparison, I'll assume that the Texans head coach was a Looney Tunes fan as a kid growing up in Bessemer, Alabama.
What makes this Texans pass rush particularly frightening is the fact that Houston can generate game-wrecking pressure rushing just four defensive linemen, and as a result, the Texans were able to blitz at the fifth-lowest rate in the National Football League, dropping two linebackers and five defensive back into coverage who can fly around, take people's heads off and turn defense into offense in a hurry.
Continuing with the Looney Tunes comparison, I suppose this would make Houston's defensive backs a bunch of Tweety Birds, but Tweety isn't nearly menacing enough to compare to the likes of Kamari Lassiter, Derek Stingley Jr., Jalen Pitre and Calen Bullock.
Houston's pass-rush mantra: 'Four equals one'
"Why are we able to rush four guys and play the way we play? It's not because I'm such a great coach," Ryans said with a laugh. "It's because we've got really great players up front. This game will always be about the players and those guys. They set the table for us, for our entire team."
Among those four players are a pair of All-Pro's, Will Anderson Jr. and Danielle Hunter, a duo of edge-rushers that rightfully gets the lion's share of the credit for Houston's destructive pass rush. Consider, Anderson and Hunter were the only pair of teammates in the NFL this season who ranked in the top 10 in sacks, and maybe even more impressively, they combined for a league-high 153 QB pressures this season.
Even though Anderson and Hunter will -- and should -- get the majority of the credit for making opposing quarterbacks uncomfortable, to a man, the Texans will tell you that it's the entire group of four working in concert that makes Houston's pass-rush as potent as it is. Even though guys like Sheldon Rankins, Tommy Togiai, Denico Autry, or Derek Barnett aren't household names, if they're on the field with Anderson and Hunter, everyone is on equal football, working with one common goal.
"We say four equals one," defensive line coach Rod Wright said. "Everything we do, we do together. That's a tribute to our guys. We know we'll sack a quarterback if we rush as one. But if one guy wins, but the other guy doesn't complement him, the quarterback's gonna get out."
This play for your teammate mindset is one shared by the entire Texans defense, not just the four big fellas up front. The entire unit has bought into Houston's SWARM mindset, and that style of play, althought somewhat simple in nature and scheme, ends up being absolutely brutal in its execution.
“We’re going to do what we do, and we’re going to be better at it than you are what you do. That’s the starting point. We’re attacking up front,” defensive coordinator Matt Burke said recently, per Tyler Dunne. "Our D-Line is going to penetrate, cause chaos, wreak havoc, rushing every play, all that."
Play this way long enough, and have the success at it that the Texans have, and it's understandable that players have whole-heartedly bought in.
“We’re savages,” safety Calen Bullock added. “The scheme? The coaches let us go out there and play fast. They don’t do anything confusing, because they know the group we have. Our mindset is we’re going to go out here and we going to hit. We’re going to get to the ball and play fast."
So next time someone asks you, 'What makes this Texans defense so great?' Your answer can be as simple as, 'They cause chaos and wreak havoc. They go out there and hit, get to the ball, and play fast.'