Texans Enter Their Bye at 2-5 and 0-4 at Home, With Tackling, Third Downs and the Trade Deadline on the List
Sunday was supposed to be the game where the Houston Texans finally won at home. Instead the Giants left with a 27-21 overtime win, and Houston heads into its bye at 2-5 - winless in front of its own fans, with a defense that cannot close, an offense that cannot stay on the field, and a November 10 trade deadline two weeks away.
The Houston Texans are 0-4 at home, and the bye week gives them nothing to do but sit with it. Devin Singletary ran 30 yards for the overtime winner on Sunday as the New York Giants beat Houston 27-21, dropping the Texans to 2-5. It is not that Houston is being blown out: three of the four home losses came by one score - 36-31 to Buffalo, 34-30 to Dallas and now 27-21 in overtime to New York - with the one ugly game a 20-6 loss to Cincinnati in Week 2. The common thread, Athlon Sports wrote in its bye-week review, is a defense that cannot close: Houston is allowing 342 yards per game, up from 277.2 last season, when it led the league, according to the Associated Press. Both of Houston's wins came on the road, at Tennessee and in London.
The tackling tape from Sunday is the bye week's first problem. Cam Skattebo ran 17 times for 124 yards and a touchdown, New York's 188 rushing yards were a season high, and the Texans missed 17 tackles, according to PFF. Head coach DeMeco Ryans did not dance around it: "The tackling wasn't good enough today," he said after the game. Linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair, who played all 66 defensive snaps, was just as blunt: "There's nobody on our team that is happy about how it's going for us."
The offense has its own list. Quarterback C.J. Stroud went 17 of 28 for 153 yards and two touchdown passes against the Giants - his lowest yardage total of the season - and stands at 1,867 yards with 11 touchdowns and one interception. Houston converted three of 12 third downs and finished with 237 total yards. Ryans said the offense has to "sustain drives and stay on the field on third down." At receiver, Jaylin Noel has turf toe and is still being evaluated after leaving in the fourth quarter in a walking boot, one week after his career-best game in London. The good news is Tank Dell: back for his first game in more than 670 days, he turned a short catch into a 43-yard gain. "It was very electric seeing Tank come out of the tunnel," Ryans said, as reported by Texans On SI. "This is just a start for him. We expect to continue increasing his workload."
Then there is the calendar. The trade deadline is November 10, which gives general manager Nick Caserio two weeks to decide what a 2-5 team does. Houston already bought once, trading for Marvin Harrison Jr., which makes a full sell-off unlikely, though a few veterans could be in play - money matters, with Houston about $41.5 million over the projected 2027 cap as of September 30, according to Over The Cap. Ryans was not ready to talk about bigger changes during the bye: "I'm not there yet," he said, adding that there is "no magical elixir that's going to drop out of the sky and fix everything." The next two games after the bye are also on the road, at the Chargers and the Browns, so Houston fans will wait almost four weeks for another shot at a home win.
