00:01Payne and Pendergast rolling along for about another 10 minutes
00:05where we hand it off to Texans Monday with Mark and John.
00:08Brandon Scott here filling in for Sean Pendergast here with Seth Payne.
00:13And we are going to talk about the Texans defense and this notion
00:18that they have somehow been figured out.
00:21But Seth, I had to kind of come clean on something here.
00:24This Randy Flores, Matt Klein thing has been messing me up all morning,
00:29and all weekend because I did do a stream on this when we got the news.
00:33So I did this on my own podcast.
00:35But I worked for a guy at KHOU named Randy Klein.
00:39And so we've got Randy Flores and Matt Klein.
00:43And I know a Randy Klein.
00:46And so in my mind, I have been wanting to combine these two guys' names
00:52ever since they pivoted Friday night and hired Randy Flores instead of Matt Klein.
00:57It has been confusing me ever since, man.
01:00I've got a similar fear with Kamari Ramsey because there's Kamari Lasseter
01:06and then there's Jalen Ramsey.
01:08Yeah.
01:08So when there's two guys who are very much in your brain implanted,
01:13if Kamari Ramsey ever ends up playing a boatload for the Texans,
01:17I'm going to screw it up at some point.
01:19I'm either going to call him Jalen or Lasseter or something.
01:23DeKwami Lasseter.
01:24Yeah, or DeKwami.
01:26Yeah.
01:27Florio calls him DeKwami and Chris Sims calls him what?
01:31Just Kwame.
01:32Kwame Lasseter.
01:34Yeah.
01:35Let Lasseter become the alter ego so we can just not get them confused
01:38and we just start messing up their names,
01:41which, of course, we don't want to do.
01:42But that would be hilarious.
01:44But the thing is, you can't have multiple Kamaris
01:47when you've already got so many Jalens, right?
01:50They've got too many Jalens to have so many Kamaris, right?
01:54And then to just make everything confusing.
01:56But I just wanted to point that out,
01:57and I was actually proud of myself for being able to hold on to it.
02:01Randy Flores, Matt Klein, Randy Flores ended up being the guy
02:04that the Astros hired.
02:06They'll introduce him in about two hours.
02:08But the part that I want to get to before we get out of here,
02:10these last eight to ten minutes or so that we can talk about this,
02:14do you think that the NFL teams have the Texans' defense figured out?
02:18I'm real curious from you, Seth, to somebody that played,
02:21somebody that's real familiar with what you're watching.
02:24My sort of surface-level thought on it is,
02:27man, this is the same defense that they've been playing,
02:31and it's never been super difficult to figure out.
02:35It's not like they needed figuring out so much.
02:38They're just not doing some of the things that made them as good as they were last year.
02:42So I haven't bought into it as much, but I'm curious what you think.
02:44No, I think, if anything, the ironic thing about it is that,
02:47if anything, D'Amico has actually had to simplify things more than they used to be
02:52just because he doesn't trust the guys in coverage and the way that they're playing.
02:57And I include the linebackers in that.
02:59So, like, they used to do, like, they typically play a lot of match quarters
03:03where you start off in zone and you convert to man.
03:07And you've got to be really, really good with understanding
03:10and recognizing which routes you're picking up are.
03:12And the Texans weren't doing a great job of it early on.
03:15So they ended up having to get, like, to be a simpler version of what they've been
03:19and play more just basic cover three.
03:22And that part of it, like, there's always going to be some element of truth to that
03:28if, like, okay, offenses know how to attack, but the question is just,
03:32all right, are they able to attack it?
03:34And that's where I still put the faults mostly on the players not playing well.
03:41Because even if, okay, let's say the Texans weren't the same,
03:45they're not playing the same caliber of defense that they are.
03:49But you should be really good at limiting huge explosive plays
03:55if you're going to be playing more zone or vanilla coverages.
04:00But they're just having wholesale breakdowns.
04:03Or when they do try to be more aggressive and they try to have Derek Singley travel
04:09with the team's best receiver, you've got other guys screwing it up
04:12so that when the offense just decides to run a simple switch route,
04:18the non-Derek Singley defensive back isn't rerouting his guy the way they want him to.
04:23So it's, like, it does boil down to, like, these things are not difficult to execute
04:30as far as just intellectually knowing what to do, and yet guys flat out aren't doing it.
04:36That's the part where sometimes, yeah, it really does boil down to
04:39these guys ain't playing the way that we expected them to play.
04:43Now, is that D'Amico's fault? Is that Matt Burke's fault?
04:46Yes, they're always going to take the responsibility for that.
04:48They are responsible for putting a better defense out there than what we're seeing right now.
04:55But you also have guys wholesale all over the place, not in the same coverages
05:01and in the same defenses versus the exact same plays they saw last year.
05:06They're not executing at the same level.
05:08Yeah, so I would say that it has at times seemed, so I'll go back to the Cowboys game,
05:13where it seemed like I was wanting, just watching, I was, well, I'll say this,
05:18I was waiting for the Texans to make an adjustment.
05:22It seemed like the Cowboys had made an adjustment after halftime.
05:25Texans' defense, people forget now because they lost the game in such embarrassing fashion,
05:30but they forget that the defense was actually kind of good that first half.
05:34Yeah.
05:34But then it falls out of the bottom, falls from the bottom in the second half.
05:37So I was waiting for the adjustment to the adjustment way too many times
05:41where we see CeeDee Lamb and Jalen Petrie matched up one-on-one in the slot.
05:47Way too many times, of course, and we know they play a lot of zone,
05:50but you're watching CeeDee Lamb run away from Derrick Stingley Jr. to a lesser player,
05:58and that player also not playing his responsibility or them not communicating properly,
06:02and it just didn't seem like they had the adjustment for the adjustment.
06:06So I think that you can shoulder the blame for both coaching and players,
06:10but a lot of what we've seen does boil down to them not playing up to the level.
06:16Like, I think it bails them out a little bit to say that the defense has been figured out.
06:20I think they've done a poor job with some adjustments in game plans and play calling,
06:25and I think they've just done a poor job with some of the fundamentals of what they're supposed to do,
06:30like tackling and basic communication and the re-blankenship play
06:35that you mentioned from the first game of the season, maybe just like not doing that at all.
06:39And I think there's times where they've had to accommodate guys like Reed Blankenship,
06:46and they're doing things where, whether it's by players doing it on their own,
06:49like when Kalen Bullock is helping out Reed Blankenship with his tight end
06:54instead of helping out Jalen Petrie with CeeDee Lamb.
06:59Like, okay, is that somebody not having the correct leverage?
07:03Is that Jalen Petrie not playing inside out?
07:05Is that Kalen Bullock making an executive decision there, or is that coming from the booth?
07:10There's just a disconnect there,
07:12and that there's certain things that they're doing that aren't translating on the field.
07:17And then, yeah, it's miserable, and I've been in a slow sinkhole of football depression
07:26because there really aren't any easy answers for it from the outside looking in
07:30other than there are certain fundamental things that they've got to do better.
07:34Seth, I mean, it's demoralizing.
07:36We can just call it like it is here, man.
07:37It's demoralizing to go out there and perform that way against J.J. McCarthy,
07:44who we understand does have some talent, was a first-round pick, national champion in college
07:50and all that, but he's on his second team in his, what, third season for a reason, right?
07:55Like, the Minnesota Vikings have felt like they were a quarterback away for a while, right?
08:02They've done the Sam Darnold thing, and now they're doing the Kyler Murray thing,
08:06and they drafted a quarterback, and he's not there anymore for a reason you would expect,
08:11or at least I expected, speak for myself here,
08:13but I expected a D'Amico Ryan's-led defense, a Will Anderson Jr.
08:18and Derek Stingley Jr. and Aziz Alshire-led defense to be able to handle J.J. McCarthy at home,
08:26even if you are coming from, you know, the other side of the world,
08:29and they just didn't do it.
08:31That is demoralizing, and you don't expect to see that from a defense that once played
08:35at the level that this defense once played at.
08:37So that's where we are.
08:38That's where we are.
08:39Yeah.
08:39So he's Seth Pate, our Brandon Scott.
08:42We don't have a lot of time here, man.
08:44I am Brandon Scott, the M4 Sean Pendergast.
08:46We had a real good time here trying to figure out what's going on with this Texas defense.
08:50Can they get back right?
08:51The bye week is over with.
08:52The bye week is over with, so it is time to get back to business.
08:56With that being said, we're going to hand things over to Texas Monday with Mark and John.
09:01Thank you, man.
09:01Amen.
