00:00But their next five weeks, Clint, they got the Giants at home,
00:04which is probably going to be the fighting J.J. McCarthy.
00:07What happened?
00:08What got into him in the fourth quarter?
00:09Anyway, we'll talk about that as the week goes on.
00:11They got a bye week.
00:13Then they got the sorry-ass Los Angeles Chargers.
00:16I mean, they are bad.
00:17They are bad.
00:18And, I mean, Justin might be the worst of them all out there.
00:22Then they got the toughest matchup is at the Browns,
00:25who are now 4-2 and keep finding ways to win games late.
00:28They got a real 2025 Denver Bronco feel to them,
00:32where Deshaun doesn't do anything for long stretches of the game
00:35and then comes alive late.
00:36They're 4-2, but that's a winnable game.
00:39And then they get that Colts team that, once again,
00:42just lost to the Titans at home and fired people.
00:44They've got a shot, Clint, right there with their next five weeks,
00:48including a bye week, to really make a run
00:51and get back into the division race.
00:54Are they alive?
00:567-1-3-5-7-2-4-6-10.
00:58Again, do you believe that they are alive?
01:00Oh, I believe they're alive.
01:01Yeah.
01:02I mean, I believe they're alive.
01:03There's a pulse.
01:04I mean, they're not on a ventilator.
01:07I was going to say, you was going to have them on a ventilator
01:08if they lost to the Titans.
01:09No question.
01:09You lose either one of these last two.
01:11I mean, I had this on Friday.
01:12This is a must win.
01:13You can't – you should absolutely –
01:14This is the –
01:15Third straight.
01:15This is the nail in the coffin.
01:17If you lose that, you fall to 1-5.
01:19And the obviously ramifications of what it means in the division,
01:25you'd have a problem.
01:26But they went out there and handled their business.
01:28And so, yeah, they're alive.
01:29But it's going to take a run like they had last year.
01:32You're going to have to win 8-9 straight to –
01:35or 8-9 or 9-10 or something like that to make this run.
01:40But, yeah, they're alive.
01:40They put themselves in a tough spot.
01:42But they stayed alive yesterday.
01:44Yeah, I think they can pull this off with the division.
01:47I don't know.
01:48I don't – like it feels like it might have to be division.
01:51The wild card, they're just – I mean, everybody in the north is 4-2
01:57except for the Bengals, and that's because they had a bye.
01:59Right?
02:00And then it looks like the Patriots have gotten themselves together,
02:03the Raiders and the Broncos and the Chiefs in the West.
02:06So, this may be a division thing.
02:10And I think – like this is set up.
02:11These are all winnable games, all winnable games against teams
02:17whose quarterbacks are either playing poorly or not great.
02:22Like, Justin Herbert's the best quarterback that they're going to run into,
02:25and he may be playing worse than any of the four that they're going to play
02:29coming up soon.
02:31So, shout-out to the Texans doing what they needed to do.
02:35I think, to me, one of the big things that jumps out, obviously,
02:40especially from a positive perspective, is there's a lot of things,
02:45and we were talking about this with the fellas,
02:46that you could talk about with this offense.
02:48All right, man.
02:49I mean, we watched the Raiders put up 30 on the Bills.
02:52I mean, hell, we just talked about Justin Herbert.
02:54They had some success against that defense of the Bills.
02:57The Bills are giving up 29, 30 points a game, it seems like.
03:01The Cowboys, as bad as anybody, they're giving up points left and right.
03:05But the Jacksonville Jaguars, Clint, were, especially from a scoring standpoint,
03:11they're two in the league, giving up just over 14 a game,
03:14even with the Texans game yesterday included.
03:17And they hadn't given up more than 20 to anybody all season.
03:23And C.J. Stroud and that offense, especially the passing game,
03:28marched right down the field repeatedly.
03:31Offensively, Clint, that jumped out to be, all right,
03:34it's one thing you do this against the Cowboys and the Bills.
03:39It's another when you put up, what, 26 against a solid defense
03:43against the Titans last week, and then you go and do this against that team.
03:47Yeah, look, I think the statement that was made,
03:51other than the Texans winning a gotta-have-it game
03:54in the division versus the Jaguars,
03:57the statement that was made was with the, I would say,
04:01the three components of the organization that I think were in most question
04:07to start the season, right?
04:08You look at the run game.
04:10It wasn't great, but it's clearly better with Woody Marks
04:13and Jawar Jordan toting a rock.
04:16I mean, I think it has more to do with those guys stylistically
04:19being able to do more with less and hit holes and make quicker decisions.
04:23But that was, at the very least, complimentary, right?
04:26Number two, the obvious, C.J. Stroud was put the organization on your back
04:33and go win the game good.
04:35And then Nick Kaley.
04:37Nick Kaley was lights out.
04:40I mean, Nick, there's schematic advantages from the play call
04:44on multiple occasions that created throwing the oceans
04:48in critical moments of the game.
04:50And then, as I've always said, your quarterback's playing at a level
04:54that he's on tier one right now with how he's playing.
04:59And your offensive play caller's got a lot to do with that.
05:02And so I think those three, the run game, Nick Kaley, and C.J. Stroud,
05:06I think those three things were what allowed you to keep up with
05:10and ultimately win that game.
05:11And those were the three biggest concerns you had coming into the season.
05:13Yeah, the run game wasn't great, but it's passable.
05:15The last two weeks has been passable, right?
05:17You get 60 yards from Woody two weeks ago,
05:20and then the combination of him and Jordan,
05:23and then you get an explosive run for a touchdown
05:26that you weren't seeing anything close to.
05:28Yep.
05:29And I think the running backs as a whole, right,
05:31Woody gets a huge pass play to get them into field goal range.
05:35And then hopefully they can explore more of that,
05:37maybe use some of that as the running game.
05:40The Patriots used to do that all the time,
05:42use that to be a part of the run game.
05:43But you saw that the running backs were passable and a factor
05:48in a way they hadn't been.
05:50But, Clint, the weapons now on the perimeter,
05:53you add Marvin, and listen, I don't know what Marvin's going to be.
05:57He's been a bust up to this point.
06:00But, I mean, he beats the hell out of Jarrett Wayne, right?
06:03Like, this is a completely talented, different guy.
06:06It's a more talented guy that also has a clear chemistry with the quarterback
06:12that they can work together.
06:14So, you start to put him.
06:16Obviously, Nico is – I told you two weeks ago,
06:20this cat's better than maybe we thought he was.
06:22We haven't given him enough credit.
06:23At least I haven't.
06:25Him out there forcing penalties that's hitting yards
06:28and then going up to get the ball.
06:30And now Jalen Knoll.
06:31Oh, my God.
06:33Put him on the field for long stretches.
06:36Those – that felt real.
06:41And it felt like the weapons around CJ felt like this is something
06:46that can be replicated not just one week.
06:49They didn't just get hot.
06:50This is something that can happen repeatedly.
06:53Well, this is – to me, it's – we did a segment, I think, on Friday of just,
06:58you know, the difference between the pass catchers on this football team right now
07:04versus the day after Jaden Higgins got hurt, right?
07:08Because at the time, Knoll was hurt.
07:10Obviously, Tank was hurt.
07:11I mean, you're digging deep, man.
07:13You've got some real concern there.
07:16To look at where CJ is right now, you just laid it out perfectly.
07:20You can call any play in the playbook.
07:23And if they take Nico away, the best players in a Texans uniform are on the field,
07:28whether it's Marvin Harrison or it's Noel or it's Schultz
07:32or it's either one of the running backs that are in there now.
07:35There's a good chance that you're getting the ball.
07:37The ball is going to one of the better, more explosive,
07:41more playmaker types of players that you have in the whole organization.
07:45And it's just a night and day difference.
07:48And so, Noel couldn't have picked a better time to really, you know,
07:52have his coming out party, even though I'd argue it's been kind of just
07:56kind of flirting with it for a while now.
07:58We just hadn't had enough, to me, enough opportunities to make some of the plays.
08:02Yeah, but that was really impressive, man.
08:05And what I like the most about it is it's something that it's not –
08:09hopefully it doesn't all disappear versus the Giants
08:12because their defense dictates that we have a different approach.
08:15Hopefully those guys are on the field again and we see more of the same.
08:18That looked a lot more – that offense Sunday looked a lot more like –
08:23Blue and gold?
08:25Looked a lot more like McVay?
08:27A lot – yeah, I was going to say, what you're saying makes sense.
08:30It looked a lot more CJ the first two years.
08:34It looked like a lot of him – I mean, one of the things you used to talk about –
08:38I know we've got to go to break.
08:39One of the things you used to talk about a lot was,
08:42man, he knew exactly where to go with the ball every single time.
08:48And where to get big plays.
08:49And we're starting to see that more and more.
08:52And it was on full display yesterday in the morning where he's just bam, bam, bam.
08:58Yeah.
08:58Blitzes everything.
08:59You wonder if by default – because here's one thing to look at,
09:03and I'd be interested to see if the advanced stats say it.
09:07Does this offense today look a lot more like McVay's offense
09:11than it does what the intentions were, which were to look more like New England's offense?
09:16Bunch of condensed formations, minimizing risk, bunching up –
09:20you know what I mean, just loading up the box.
09:21The quarterback can't – don't know who's coming.
09:23There's seven, eight, nine guys in the box.
09:25Spread them out.
09:26Makes it a lot easier for the quarterback to know, oh, you're coming hot?
09:29Well, Will, I got you.
09:30Boom, let me throw this a little quick right here.
09:31I do wonder as we dissect the all 22 of if this thing's shifting a little bit more
09:38towards the spread CJ-centric McVay system
09:41than what they were trying to do earlier in the season.
