Transcript of Why a 24-Point Texans Win Over the Cowboys Had Reasons for Concern

Cooper rush with Dattle to his left, bunch formation right after a motion. Rush in trouble. Strip stack. Who's got it? It's still loose. Texas pick it up. Here's Barnet on the run. 20, 15, 10, 5. Touchdown. Scoop, score, Derek Barnet.

Derek Barnet does it all. Causes the force fumble, waits for his teammate to to force another fumbal, then picks up the ball, goes into the end zone in a weird night in Dallas. They're all weird lately. Texans win 34 to 10. That was Mark Vandermeer of K-I-L-T. Little Andre wear in the booth as well. A fittingly ugly, but fun, touch down on a night that was just ugly. It wasn't fun at all for the Dallas Cowboys, but it was much needed for the Texans. And I'm joined by my friend, nick Shook. I need you with me to make sense of this Monday night and make it entertaining for the listeners.

Well, I'll tell you this. I felt massive relief when Jalen Petrie flew in out of nowhere and knocked that ball out of Tyler Guighton's hands, freeing it for Derek Barnet to recover scoop and score for the decisive countdown. Because in that moment, I realized the Cowboys, who are not a good football team, and especially in this state, no longer have a chance of making this game interesting. It's not that I don't want to see an interesting game. It's that I don't want to see a very obviously fraudulent team have a chance through four quarters in a game like that. So good on the Texans for getting that job done. I got some concerns about them, though, Greg, and I'm sure we'll get into that here momentarily.

Yeah. Now, let's just get into it. So that that shutdown happened with about 12 minutes to go in the game. It made the game 27-10. You see the final score 34 to 10. You think blowout. It was a It's a blowout. Cooper Rush in this Cowboys offense, ultimately, they weren't going to win this game. You play it 10 times. I think they would have lost all 10 times. That said, the yardage ends up being close in this game, and it was closer than it needed to be. In fact, it was a one-score game before Mike McCarthy actually took points off the board after Brandon Aubrey hits a 64-yard field goal late in the third, early fourth, when that drive was happening. And it was to be 20 to 13. Instead, McCarthy, understandably, takes the points off the board. They try to score a shutdown. They don't go anywhere. Cooper Rush tries to turn the ball over a couple of times. The Texans finally stop them. But at that point, it It's still a one-score game. I'm just thinking, and I'm texting with other people who love C. J. Stroud, and I'm watching this game, and I'm thinking, is this offense just not going to come together?

Because for them to look so disjointed and C. J. Stroud to look so inconsistent on a night against the Cowboys where it just was all laid out for you, it does make you wonder if it might not just happen for this team, despite them being seven and four and having a couple of winnable games coming up.

Yeah, it's a perplexing situation because when you look at them based on record, you're like, Oh, well, this is a good team. This is a team that's going to be contending and probably make the playoffs because they're in a bad division. When you watch the first play of the game, you see Nico Collins take a screen down the left side of the field for a countdown. It gets wiped out by penalty. But if you watch them over four quarters, you get to understand who the Texans are, which is a bit of an enigma. Because at times, in the first half against Detroit the week prior, they looked explosive. C. J. Stroud's dealing. He's got time to throw. He's got that quick release. He gets the ball out on time on target. Then you go to this week and it's like, Where is that? Where is the rhythm of this offense? I'm done yearning for last year because I know it's not going to happen with this team. It starts with the offensive line. They have not protected him well all year. They didn't protect him well at times tonight. I mean, you let a free rusher through the A-gap on a third down where he just got to immediately dirt the ball and give up possession.

That's concerning. Even with Micah Parsons on the field, he's not blowing up the game to the point where I'm sitting back and watching this line thinking he's the problem. They're the problem. I honestly think, and this is not a knock on Bobby Sloke because I think he's got a tough job right now, their offensive line issues, I think, have messed with his flow, like his ability to call plays in games. There's a third and short situation where they hurry up and try to sneak a play off. It's a quick pass to the sideline of Tankdale. It's inaccurate, it's incomplete. Then they punt on the next play. If you're going to do that, are you going forward on fourth down? I know I'm getting in the weeds here a little bit, but it speaks to the disjointed nature of the Texans who at times look broken offensively defensively. And that's concerning, considering they're probably going to win this division.

No, I think that was a great sequence to point out, nick, because I'm with you. That was the sign of a totally discombobulated offense. They punt at that point, too. There was a couple of times in this game, actually, where after failing on fourth down early in the game where C. J. Stroud was intercepted, they decided to be aggressive. It was when they were up seven, nothing, and they go for it on a fourth and two, fourth and three. And Stroud just throws a curious pass where it looked like he had Nico Collins for the countdown. Troy Akeman was dumbfounded. At first, I thought maybe it was a miscommunication. He thinks Nico Collins is going to sit down, but It was pretty clearly an in-breaking route. Nico certainly had the right read because it was going to be a shutdown, and Stroud just misses him. And there were three or four throws like that in the night where I think of Stroud's accuracy as being what's most special about him. And he's just missing guys. And he's out of rhythm. I think that's the right word for it. And they're talking up their offensive line.

This is the second straight week. They've had the for the first time in a while, and they do think this is their best five. And maybe they will get some cohesion. You mentioned that first play of the game. That was Laramie Tunzel, who... That's the first play of the game. You know you've practiced that a million times, and he made it easy. He's a legal man downfield, and maybe they wouldn't have had the countdown. If he wasn't downfield, he did get the block on that play. We'll never know. Nico Collins certainly looks 100 % healthy. That is a great sign, and he absolutely helped them out tonight. But Laramie Tunzel is the The worst great player in the NFL. You know what I mean? He's an all-pro multiple times, but he screws up this often so many times. And there's so many moments of this game where they're just disjointed. They're wide receivers and they're tight ends. They can't block in the running game very well. And that's the difference between them and some of these other Shana and McVeigh tree type of teams. They draft and develop guys on the outside in terms of their wide receivers and tight ends who can block.

The Texans can't. So I know we're sounding very negative, but I think it's because we see the potential of this team. I had this team in the conference championship before the season, and I'm actually not out of hope yet. How about you? Only because I've watched enough NFL seasons to know, sometimes if you just hang around and hang around and you have good players and the schedule is easy enough, sometimes it really can click at the very last second. It's possible.

Yeah, well, that's the key, because at seven and four, you have a little bit of leeway. You're not in a good division, so you can work out the kinks. I'm I'm getting impatient because they've spent so much time not working out the kinks. But the idea of continuity with that offensive line and this potentially being their best five, that does encourage me. I like to compare them to another team that I still have hope in that's in a much worse spot, and that's the Cincinnati Vangles, who we talked about last night, who have the inverse of their record at this point and need to basically win out to have a shot. The Texans aren't there. They have a little bit of breathing room to figure it out. But I also need them to prove it to me to a degree because you just talked about how they don't block the run well. Joe Mixon still goes for yards on 20 carries and scores three rushing touch downs. He's been fantastic for most of the season, especially when he's been healthy, and yet that's overcoming some struggles up front. So the potential is there. It's just you have these remaining seven weeks to figure it out.

Are you going to figure it out? Because the glimpse is we've seen it. We just need to see it over four quarters for me to truly believe. I had them in the Super Bowl, Greg. I know it was going out on a limb a little bit. I had Lions Texans in the Super Bowl. I would love to see that, but right now, I don't quite believe it yet.

That's not happening. I'm saying I'm holding I just have seen too much of NFL football where it can just surprisingly come together at the end. For them, maybe that's winning a playoff game or two. You just never know. I'm feeling great, by the way. I went back to look at my predictions today, and man, I'm feeling great about those conference championships. I have lions over eagles. That's pretty good. And then I have bills over Texans. Don't feel good about the Texans, but I do like my MVP, Josh, Bill. Bill is winning the Super Bowl stack right now. I'm feeling good, so you never know. Let's go. Okay.

You're on a heater. This was a game that... Look, we talked about this last night. We thought it was going to be a blah, right? This is a game where if you're actually of that caliber as the Texans, you prove it in a matchup like this. And they didn't. I mean, they did, but they didn't.

Their defense did. They're not totally healthy up front. Will Anderson, they've been missing pieces there. Derek Stingley was fantastic covering CeeDee Lamb tonight, so it gives him some credit. 17 routes run on Stingley by Lamb, 2 catches, 19 yards, 3 pass breakups, and an interception. He was fantastic. I think he's been a little up and down this year, actually, for a guy who he thought it's going to be a super duper star. Mixin is a top five running back right now. 22 touches for 153 yards, excuse me, and three touch downs. And you're right, it's not getting blocked up very well. I looked at the end of the game at the success rate because I just was wondering, he's running so well. There were a few runs where he got three yards and it should have been negative two, or he got seven and it should have been one. And it makes sense when you look at his runs, he had a 40 % success rate, which is solid. It's not amazing. It's not as good as the numbers would indicate. But he also got stuffed, which means a negative run or at the line of scrimmage four times, which that's a lot.

Good running games don't have that happen. And you see that week after week with him. That's disappointing, and that's the offensive line. And that's the part where it's hard to imagine them getting it fixed. And it feels especially annoying tonight because you know they're going against a team that, Yes, they're totally different with Micah Parsons back. It's obvious, but they're still not a good run defense. They should be able to run better against this team.

I will say, despite everything that we just said about the offensive line, their struggles throughout this season, I do give a big tip of the captain, nick Casario, for jumping all over the idea that Joe Mixon is available for a seventh-round pick. I mean, what a steal. He doesn't have a long life ahead of him. He's approaching 30. He's going to be 29 in the summer. But man, for the position they're in right now where they have money to spend in roster spots to occupy, what a move, man. That's paid off in droves for them.

Yeah, he's a pro bowler. I'm trying to think of AFC All-Pro. Well, there isn't such a thing, so I don't know what I'm talking about. All-pro is going to be tough. For for Mixin to pull off. But Daneo Hunter in this game had two sacks, nine pressures, three quick hits. And yes, it's all coming against the Cowboys, but it just points out who the players are. I do worry a a bit about Mixin because with the bangles, his issue was he would always start off the season running so hard. I think no one runs harder on a per-run basis, especially for a guy that's been in the league this long. But he just would wear down physically and not be healthy by the end of the year with the bangles. He had a little injury early this season, so the key for him is just to stay healthy. And yeah, I mentioned Nico Collins. We haven't really done the stats. He ends up 4 for 54, but he had 37 yards after the catch. It looked explosive. That was really important. Takedel made a couple of plays. He makes more sense a little further down the order.

John Mechie looks like he's developing into a nice third receiver. He also had a nice tackle on a fake punt. That's how you know the Cowboys were desperate. They called a fake punt and threw it short of the sticks on their very first possession, Bones Fossil going nuts. And Mike McCarthy did not look happy after the game. Yes, in the first three possessions alone, here's what happened. You had the TD, that was almost 80 yards, called back by penalty. You had the C. J. Stroud interception. You had the fake punt disaster by the Texans. That is how we started this game. I mean, by the Cowboys, rather.

We knew we were in for a weird night, and we got a weird night. Luckily, it ended as it should have with the Texans running away with it. I forgot Cooper rushed through an interception the very next drive as well. And Calin Bullock dropped one. That could have been another interception.

Should we talk a little bit about the Cowboys?

Yeah, we have to.

They have trailed all their home games by at least 17 points. They have been outscored in their five home games, most of those with Dak Prescott, by 118 points. That is the third largest point differential in NFL history for your first five home games. So if you're a cowboy season ticket holder that's gone to each one of those games, you have seen the third worst performance by a home team in NFL history. We're talking about the winless Browns. We're talking about the Bucks with McKay. We're talking about all the worst teams in history. This Cowboys team at home is as bad as any of them. They get a Kavante Turpin 64-yard countdown where he has the fastest time next-gen stats all season for a ball carrier. So you got one highlight in this game, but Cooper Rush is all over the place. He throws the ball 55 times, and he was sacked at least five. So that's 60 drop-backs in this game. And they got seven more games, Chuck.

I know. And that's what I wrote in the What We Learn, which you can check out on nfl. Com. Where do they go from here? Yeah, he looked better than he did the week before because he was completely ineffective in his first start, Cooper Rush was. But you don't want to ever ask Cooper Rush to drop back to throw 55 or drop back 60 times in a game and think that you're going to win. There's no support in the running game. Even the game situation didn't really call for it until essentially the fourth quarter for them to be throwing that much. Yet that's where they found themselves. Themselves. And also to add on to that stat that you listed, it gets even worse. They've trailed by 20 plus points at home in six straight games dating back to the Super Wild Card Weekend lost to the packers. That's where everything fell apart. They had a quiet offseason, and now they're paying the price for it with seven weeks left to go.

It's one of the most depressing seasons I can remember. There was a play when they were driving, and that was after they took the three points off the board. And they're trying to really make this a game. At that point, it's a 10-point game. You get a touch down there. It's down to three, late third, early fourth quarter. And on the fourth downplay, Troy Akeman, just with disdain in his voice, looking at the route that CeeD Lamb and the tight end was. It wasn't Ferguson, right? Because he left with a concussion. And he just said, I don't know what's going on over here. Knowing just with the disdain, I don't know what's going on over here. Someone messed up. They should not be in the same place. And then here comes Mingo. He's actually doing a good job for his quarterback, but Cooper Rush just throws it over his head. And Troy Akeman, they were trying to put a good face on this game for a while, and by the end, he was just like, he was sick of that his Cowboys are this embarrassing.

He even commented on the fact that the Cowboys fans had made a mass exodus out of 18th East Stadium by the fourth quarter. He goes, The amount of red in this stadium is overwhelming. Like, wow. They're trying to spin it like, Texans fans travel. No, Cowboys fans left because they knew the team didn't have a shot.

That's true, but the Texans fans were loud as hell in the first quarter, too. When Stout hit that breakdown, I should have mentioned, after the penalty that called back the long breakdown, they still went down the field and had a It was a great drive. It was the one drive all night where you thought, oh, we're going to get the Texans. The perfect play calls. Nixon ends up getting a 45-yard touch on. Hell, let's listen to one of the better moments of the night.

At the 45 A 10-yard line of Dallas, first and 10. Hand off, Nixon starts right, cuts back left. Has room, 30, 25, 20, 15, 10, 5. Rock and roll. Touchdown, Joe Nixon. 45-yard TD run. Monday night, Nixon.

I love that Monday Night Mixin call. And he ends up with three touch downs on the night. So he lived up to that name. Yeah, the cowboys are going to be in primetime. I was going to have this conversation later as part It's part of the news. But let's have it now.

All right.

The bangles and Cowboys are slated for a week 16 primetime game, and they cannot be flexed. Do you know why they cannot be flexed?

Week 16? It's not a Monday nighter, is it?

It is a week 14 game. It's Troy and Joe again. It's in just a few weeks. They cannot flex it because it's the Simpson's watch-along game. I don't know if you've seen about this.

Oh, man. It was Toy Story last year. It's the Simpsons now.

It's the Simpsons now, and all the pre-production work that goes into that, including the voiceovers and everything, they're putting too much work into that. They're not doing that on the fly. They're doing that work right now. So we got to keep Bengals, Cowboys in primetime on Monday night football.

Well, I think we'll all come away with the same feeling and quote Bart Simpson. Bart Simpson in in that moment. Eat my shorts.

There you go. It's funny, though, because ESPN, they wouldn't flex the Cowboys out anyways. They would be like, Oh, yeah, we can't do it because it's the Simpsons. But they don't want to do it anyways because it's the Cowboys, and they get the ratings, at least for the first half of these games. I do think they'll get flexed out in week 16. That's a Tampa Bay, Dallas game. So I don't think that one is going to be on the schedule. But yes, that that bangles game will stay We'll talk a little bit more about flex in a second. Just a couple of final thoughts of this game. Did you happen to see the commercial where it's a part of the Salute to Service initiative that they let Servicemen play against Micah Parsons on Madden, and they put it up on the Jumbotron in Jerry World. Do you know where I'm going with this?

Go ahead.

Did you see the score of the game?

Yes, it was It was 50 to 7.

It was 50 to 7. Micah Parsons put it on this, dude. You got to honor this man by putting on 50 to 7. They tried to fake us out by showing Micah Parsons all upset about a play that happened. First of all, great job by Parsons that he was that upset that he even gave up points to this bum. If you're going to have a serviceman play Madden on the big board in Jerry World, let's get one that can compete a little bit.

All right.

Let's get someone that can compete.

One, playing on a Jumbotron was a childhood dream of mine because I saw Cee C. Sabathe do it in a progressive field back in the day. So good on the serviceman for being able to do that with Micah Parsons. Two, that is the type of competitor Micah Parsons is that he was upset that he gave up any points. That's exactly why he put 50 on him. And three, actually, 3A, this reminds me of when Cardale Jones, the former Ohio State quarterback, went to a hospital and played Madden against a kid and destroyed him even worse. 3b, I played against the best Madden player on the planet for a story a couple of years ago. His name is Henry Levered. He's won like six Madden bowls. Nice kid. And he dominated me by about the same margin. So I know how that guy feels.

That's the best one in the world. And yeah, I hear you. Let's just pick a guy that can compete a little better. That's all. That's all. Yeah. I mean, it was a night of no mercy.

He's disturbing our country. He can't be practicing Madden.

It was a night of no mercy. Parsons body-slammed Robert Woods at the end of this game. Let's actually look at the tweet that the Texans sent out towards the Cowboys, and they said, Look out below with a big fat L on it, and then showed the piece of metal roof that fell from the Texan Stadium. What a picture, by the way, that someone caught, apparently, or they superimposed this.I don't even know.They did. Yes, before the game, they opened the roof and a huge piece of metal fell. I'm almost surprised the Texans sent this out, not because they're putting that L on the Cowboys. This is a real rivalry. Props to those Texans fans. Enjoy this win, by the way. Your team want to combine six games over two seasons, and two years later, you got a couple of nimrods like us honking that they didn't look good enough while they're beating the Cowboys 34 to 10 in Dallas to get to a seven and four record. You've been through it. Enjoy these moments. Don't worry about us. But the fact that they're are making fun of this. The Texans are making fun of the Cowboys for their building to fall apart.

It's funny because if that metal had hit some dude or a woman on the sideline, I don't know. We could have a decapitation or something. That thing looked scary.

I mean, it was floppy sheet metal. I don't think it had a lot of weight to it, but it was good on the Texans for taking two pieces of sheet metal, making it into an L. That's great social media work out of their team.

That's true. It wasn't the real thing, but that's Okay, you're saying floppy sheet metal wouldn't hurt you, but from that high up with the velocity, I guess it was swinging back and forth with a leaf, but I don't know. Maybe I'm stupid. A football, if it hit you from that far up, would hurt like hell.

I mean, Gronk once caught a pass, dropped out of a helicopter, and he was perfectly fine.

Yeah, if you're paying attention, but I'm just saying if that hits you in the head. That's true. My last thought on this game is just I'll remember the facial expressions in this game. C. J. Stroud's face after he threw that first intercepting. I already was worried that like, Oh, man, he's in his head a little bit because after that, I don't know if he totally got out of it. He was so mad, so just frustrated already after that first interception. But the glare that CeeD Lamb gave Cooper Rush after Cooper Rush threw behind him on a second down play was, I would say, withering. It was withering. The very next play, by the way, Cooper Rush throws a go ball that wasn't open at all to CeeD Lamb, almost to apologize. And CeeD Lamb has to have an offensive pass interference, and that knocks him out of field goal range. That is the type of night it was. But the Cowboys offensive players on the sideland, they're like, I can't believe we got to play with this dude for another few weeks. Or a guy that's apparently worse than this dude, Trey Lance. What are you thinking if you're Trey Lance right now?

I mean, it's a humbling moment for him. I got a text tonight. It was like, Is Trey Lance really that bad that he can't replace him? I'm like, Yeah.

You can talk about his precie's members. We will find out. We will find out. He will be playing. Titans, Texans next week. Texans got to play better. I said this is a perfect schedule for them because they can beat up on the bad teams, get to nine and four, and then the tougher part of their schedule comes. They have Miami, they have Kansas City, they have some tough games down the stretch, but you got to play better. Even the Titans, I'm not counting that as a W necessarily.

No, I would agree. The Titans can be a frisky bunch. Their defense is not as good as I think people thought they were earlier in the season. But if Will Levis can have played turnover-free football, it could get interesting. They made it interesting over the weekend this past weekend. So we'll see. Texans do have to start to find a rhythm, though. Maybe this is the first step.

Yes, I hope so. And yeah, that post-buy schedule, if they can get past Titans, Jaguars the next two weeks, they'd be nine and four. At that point, about the three seed, most likely in the AFC. And then you have a buy. Then you have Dolphins at Chief's Ravens, your next three games after that. So they are going to be a big part of the story. And I'm glad. I believe in you, C. J. Stroud.