That's how I feel about the New England Patriots 42-14 drubbing of the Texans last night on the increasingly irrelevant Monday Night Football. There's no way to sugar-coat it for Texans fans: Your team looked awful. Inept in almost every area of the game.
Some thoughts:
- This Texans team is not quite as good as everyone thought they might be. Looking at their schedule their best win was over Denver, in Week 2 BEFORE Peyton Manning's arm was back to full strength. Chicago is probably not even going to be in the playoffs as fast as they're falling.
- It's easy to blame Schaub, but the offensive game plan was weak and that offensive line might as well be playing touch football. Not that Schaub doesn't share some of the blame. Good quarterbacks do well under pressure, average QB's struggle. Schaub struggled.
- The Texans run game is struggling right now. I think that's partly due to poor O-line play, and Arian Foster channeling a little bit of CJ2K in his running style, trying to over-lean and cut everything back. I've made jokes about his diet dragging him down. I don't really think it's his diet, but I do think something is wrong.
- The Texans team spends too much time worrying about things that really don't matter. From Connor Barwin driving a Prius, to the design of letter jackets to a host of other things, while the Texans are playing around it's pretty clear that the Patriots were studying film. This needs to change if the Texans want to be an elite team going forward.
- The New England Patriots' plan for dealing with the Texans' pass blocking was basically to hold the Texans' D as they jumped up in the air. It was funny listening to everyone on the MNF broadcast call the Patriots' plan brilliant while the footage was clearly showing Patriot O-linemen grabbing fist fulls of Texan jersey.
- What this loss does do is make next week's game against Indy very crucial. If the Texans win out, they receive home field throughout the playoffs no matter what. If they lose another game (assuming the Patriots win out) then they fall to the 2nd or 3rd seed, or worse. It's certainly not panic time, but Texans fans would be forgiven if they decide to grip just a bit in the coming weeks.
