Key matchup: RB Kenneth Gainwell vs. LB Henry To\u2019oTo\u2019o<\/p>\n
There aren\u2019t many weaknesses on this Texans defense, but if there\u2019s one sliver to poke at, it\u2019s their linebackers in coverage. It\u2019s no mystery what the Texans\u2019 defense does. Houston doesn\u2019t disguise much and plays a lot of cover 1 (man-to-man with one deep safety), cover 3 (zone with both corners and the free safety deep) and quarters (two-high match coverage).<\/p>\n
The Texans\u2019 coverages put a lot of stress on their corners to cover one on one and they have the best corner duo in the league in Kamari Lassiter and Derek Stingley Jr. Testing them outside too often is not a winning strategy. When they play quarters and cover 1, teams can attack their linebackers in coverage.<\/p>\n
Henry To\u2019oTo\u2019o, in particular, struggles in coverage. In Week 16, the Raiders lined up running back Ashton Jeanty out wide to single up To\u2019oTo\u2019o in coverage and Jeanty beat him on a go route.<\/p>\n
The Steelers did the same with running back Kenneth Gainwell against the Lions to get him matched up on a linebacker.<\/p>\n
Despite splitting the backfield with Jaylen Warren, Gainwell has the sixth-most receiving yards (486) among running backs this season. He\u2019s a legitimate route runner out of the backfield who isn\u2019t just breaking tackles on checkdowns. The Steelers like to split him out wide in empty formations and run him on choice routes from the backfield. In a game in which both offenses could struggle to move the ball, Gainwell is one of the few mismatches that favor the offense. He should be a big part of the game plan against the Texans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key matchup: RB Kenneth Gainwell vs. LB Henry To\u2019oTo\u2019o There aren\u2019t many weaknesses on this Texans defense, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-409155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}