The Houston Texans won a tough-fought battle in Week 1 against their inter-division foes the Indianapolis Colts 27-25. Things weren't as smooth as many had hoped, but with a few pieces to get acclimated and the improvement of the Colts at the QB position from last season, it overall was a solid win for head coach DeMeco Ryans and company.
There was a ton of chatter about the ceiling of this Texans' team all offseason and it still seems there is room to grow following last week's opening game.
One of those areas that we should see improvement from the Texans is communication and execution - an area that saw a glaring weakness right before the half when the Texans reached the Colts' territory only to have the clock run out after a confusing sequence of events that reset the clock to a running-on-the-whistle five seconds left.
Instead of running his field goal unit onto the field to extend their lead, Ryans and the Texans trouted out C.J. Stroud and although he got rid of the ball for incompletion time struck 00:00 and the Texans left potential points on the board.
Following the team's victory, head coach DeMeco Ryans was asked about the confusion right before half and whether or not it was a learning experience in which the second-year head man shut down immediately citing it was just a missed moment due to communication issues.
“No, it wasn’t a learning experience for me. It was a, we knew the situation. Communication amongst the coaches. We’ve got to be better and communicate what I say get done.”
The media continued to prod at Ryans about the blunder before half asking him if it's hard to regroup after something like that. He was very straightforward and said that it would be corrected moving forward without any heavy thoughts.
“No, it gets dealt with. Just like anything else, it gets dealt with. We move on."Texans' HC DeMeco Ryans
“No, it gets dealt with. Just like anything else, it gets dealt with. We move on. Whatever happened in the second half, just like whatever happened in the previous week, it doesn’t relate to or doesn’t trickle into the next week. You move on and that’s what we did yesterday. We moved on, we moved on, we finished the game, that’s the most important thing.”
It would be shocking to see the Texans mismanage something like this in the near future, but it is something worth monitoring. Yes, it is week one and there are bound to be hiccups, but with the high expectations placed upon the Texans this offseason they are, and will continue to be, nit-picked for any semblance of blemishes.
The Texans will have a chance to move past their close victory and move to 2-0 on Sunday Night Football when they face off against rookie phenom Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears from NRG Stadium.
