While Baker\u2019s 3-0 Buccaneers are stealing wins in the final seconds, the 0-3 Texans keep finding ways to give them back. Week 1 against the Rams? A fumble with under two minutes to play. Week 2 vs. Tampa Bay? Three failed cracks from the 1-yard line, plus a missed sack on fourth-and-10 that set up a Bucs touchdown with six seconds left. Week 3 against Jacksonville? Two fourth-quarter turnovers in scoring range, including an interception with 27 seconds on the clock. Three games, three gut-punch endings. What is going on in Houston?<\/p>\n
This was supposed to look different.<\/p>\n
After two straight division titles with 10-7 records, Houston reshuffled its offense in the offseason, with a new coordinator, four new starters up front and fresh weapons in Christian Kirk, Jayden Higgins and Woody Marks. But through three weeks, it\u2019s been a mess. Communication is an obvious problem and the offense looks out of sync. Other teams see a leaky line and a team struggling to run the ball because it can\u2019t protect. I\u2019ve been told \u201cgive it time\u201d by many close to the situation, but it\u2019s hard to ignore that the Texans rank dead last in offensive success rate, which is somehow worse than the Giants. Worse than Joe Flacco-led Browns. Worse than the Titans (who the Texans play Sunday).<\/p>\n
And somehow, they still don\u2019t have a red-zone touchdown \u2014 the only team with that distinction.<\/p>\n
The shock isn\u2019t that the Texans are struggling. It\u2019s that they appear to be regressing. The roster has talent that could help Houston get through this September slump. Nico Collins is one of the best wideouts in the league, the running back room has depth (Joe Mixon remains on the non-football injury list with a foot\/ankle issue, but there should be clarity by mid-October) and C.J. Stroud is a good young quarterback. The fix isn\u2019t complicated: Take care of the football. The problem is that\u2019s also the hardest thing for them to do right now.<\/p>\n
At some point, Houston has to stop co-starring with the Patriots in that Spider-Man meme, both tripping over themselves on offense.<\/p>\n
GO FURTHER<\/p>\n
What I\u2019m hearing on the Jaxson Dart decision, Houston\u2019s problems and Kirk Cousins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Baker\u2019s 3-0 Buccaneers are stealing wins in the final seconds, the 0-3 Texans keep finding ways to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-187590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}