Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud missed entirely too many plays in their 31-2 loss to the Ravens on Christmas Day. Payne and Pendergast relive the moments here.
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00:00So there you go. So, so you get a big special teams play with Tommy Townsend, 70-yard punt,
00:05very first play, Kamari Lassiter screaming off the edge, tackles the untackleable at
00:11that point, seemingly, Derek Henry.
00:13It was a, it was a really nice play by him. It reminded me of last year when Derek Stingley,
00:17who was a young player at that point, came and he wrapped up Derek Stingley a couple
00:23times in the second game, or Derek Henry, excuse me. The second time they played them
00:27like in, in, in a veteran type of way. Like he, he kind of rectified some of the mistakes
00:33he had made in the first game versus the Ravens last year or versus the Titans and Derek Henry.
00:38And yeah, it felt like that, like, all right, yeah, this is, this is our dog.
00:41It was, yeah, man. So that was cool. So defense comes up big. What was the score at that point?
00:45It was 10 to 2, 10 to 2. So, but you're getting the ball back here, right? You're getting
00:49the ball back. They kick off, they kick off to Damian Pierce and we get this.
00:55And here are two men back deep at the Houston Texans, Damian Pierce and Dario Gunbowala.
01:01Tucker blasts it. This, or Stout rather, blasts it and two yards deep. A little hesitation
01:08by Pierce, but he brings it out. Across the 20, 25, 30, still going, brings the tackle,
01:1335, 40, and finally brought down the 45-yard line. Damian Pierce, nice return, great field
01:21position for Houston.
01:22Okay. So special teams has now come up with two massive plays. In the last three plays,
01:29there has literally three straight plays in the game. You had a 70-yard punt from Tommy
01:34Townsend, special teams. You had a safety by Kamari Lassiter, defense. You had a kickoff
01:40return by Damian Pierce, special teams. Offense gets the ball at basically at midfield at
01:46their own 43-yard line. And they, they worked the ball into Baltimore territory. They get
01:53to third and I say they work the ball in. Ball at the 37-yard line of Baltimore. Hand
01:58off to Mixon, minus two yards. Stroud incomplete deep right to Mechie. That was one of his
02:04misses. Stroud passed short left to Mechie for nine yards, gets you to fourth and three
02:09at the Baltimore 30-yard line. The Texans go for it, which I approved of at the time.
02:14They're going to need to be aggressive. They need touchdowns. D'Amico said that. They get
02:18what I thought was a very marginal penalty where the play's breaking down and CJ just
02:22throws it deep to Robert Woods and they get a pass interference penalty. We'll take it.
02:27We'll take it. Now it's first and goal at the Baltimore 10. Mixon runs up the middle
02:31and man, he was one shoestring away from getting into the end zone on that play. Gets it down
02:36to the three-yard line. Second and goal, they run Mixon up the middle for negative one yards.
02:41Big shocker. Third and goal at the four, pass incomplete to Mechie. He's covered, like covered
02:48well, like just blanketed.
02:49Yeah. And it was Greg Olson watching the TV copy this morning, pointed out, he kind of
02:53summed it up completely. It's all right. You're like, you got all guys and they're all in
02:57man coverage and you're just expecting one of them to get open. Like, like let's run
03:02some crossers. Let's run some meshes. Let's do some of these things that we've been wondering
03:05about all year long. There's just, there are no options on there.
03:09This column plays like tank Dell and Stefan Diggs are still on the team. Right, right,
03:12right. Yeah. You got, no, you've got guys that are not man beaters out there. Nico,
03:16Dalton Schultz ain't going to shake some bro out of his shoes out there.
03:18No, no. And Mechie didn't on that play. So they go forward on fourth and goal at the
03:23four-yard line. There you go.
03:26Play coming in for Bobby Slowick. Play clock down to 20. Texans huddle up fourth and goal
03:31from the four. Down 10 to two with 539 to go in the second quarter. Big moment here
03:38in this game. Stroud in the gun. One back, Mechie in motion to the right. Fourth and
03:45goal from the four. CJ gets the snap. CJ looking, firing to the right. Got a man mixing, going
03:51for the pylon. He's not going to get there. Not going to get there. The Davias right.
03:59White rather putting up the wall and mixing just had too much traffic on that side. Texans
04:06turn it over on downs.
04:07And it was Washington who came, who came across, I forget his first name. I think number 29
04:13who just came screaming across the field to stop mixing at the one-yard line. That,
04:18that was a big game over type feeling right there. Like you ain't going to get down here
04:22very often. I liked going forward on fourth down there. I agreed with the philosophy.
04:26But it was, it was yet again, another instance of special teams or the defense giving the
04:31offense, the ball and good field position. And then the offense doing nothing. It was
04:36a micro in a matter of just a few minutes where special teams, huge play like punt unit,
04:43huge play, defense, huge play return unit, huge play, like three straight plays literally
04:48were a 70 yard punt, a safety and a 45 yard kickoff returned by Damian Pierce.
04:55And then the offense dinks and dunks its way needs a marginal pass interference penalty
05:00to set up complete and utter failure in a goal to go situation. That's the Texan season,
05:06especially the last eight weeks in a nutshell. That's who they've been. I couldn't tell.
05:12Was it after that play that Mixon and CJ were exchanging words on the sideline? I didn't
05:17see that. A couple of people mentioned it to me. So I got, I got to watch the TV copy
05:22in its entirety to catch up on some of the drama that all of you folks at home got to
05:25see. Yeah. Well, and then, but then when we watched unfold after that, was it almost like,
05:29yeah, it was a definite wind out of the sales moment.
05:31I agree with the sentiment Mark Vandermeer had in the play-by-play, which is, this is
05:35a massive moment in this game. This isn't, Oh, we didn't convert down there and it's
05:40some other team. Like this is, this is the Ravens. They're going to score 21 more points
05:45on you, at least the way your defense is playing. So you better get eight points down here.
05:49You know, and I don't know if D'Amico would have gone for the two down there to create
05:52the optics of a tie. And you know, like you're feeling good going into the locker room at the
05:57half. Cause you're tied with the Ravens. I could have seen, he's gone for two earlier
06:01in games than that. So I could have seen that, but it's irrelevant now because then all the
06:05warts in the Texans defense started to show up very next series. The big chunk, 60 plus yard play
06:12plague happened. Henry in the backfield, guns and 10 Ravens from their 20 yard line.
06:21Jackson takes the snap. He's going to throw it and he's going to be under pressure. Now Jackson
06:25escapes to the right side on loads to Andrews across the 40, 45 step on 50, the 40th Houston
06:32down the right sideline. There's traffic and he's pushed out inside the 15 yard line by Caleb
06:37Bullock. How did that happen? Jackson got free and found the tight end who took it into the red zone.
06:44The Christian Harris was putting that bind where Lamar Jackson had extended the play so long
06:50and he's rolling over towards the right. Is he going to keep it? Is he going to,
06:54and Christian Harris just, he let Mark Andrews run past him. And then, and then I thought too,
06:59so this isn't an excuse for the play happening, but remember there was a report that Christian
07:04Harris was walking gingerly off the field during warmups. I did. Yeah. I'm watching Christian
07:08Harris try to, to chase down Mark Andrews there. Uh, he, he looked like he had a little hitch in
07:14his game. He got stiff armed, but he did. You're right. I'm like, I'm like, I, and with these
07:17uniforms, you can't tell who it is right away because the numbers are so dark against the blue,
07:22especially from where we're sitting. Um, and I'm like, Oh, who, okay. Who's that that just
07:25got stiff armed and isn't catching up to Mark because it was Kalen Bullock who ultimately had
07:29to come from across the field to knock him out of bounds. And I'm like, Oh, that's Christian Harris.
07:34Yeah. I mean, that's where it comes down to the, the discipline of staying in your zones and
07:39staying, especially when a quarterback scrambles, once he leaves to one side of the field, that's
07:44where everything really starts to fall apart. So Christian Harris ends up there basically being
07:48the only defender on that half of the field because other guys have also overly committed
07:53to Lamar Jackson to the other side of the field. So I'm not evolving Christian Harris. He was
07:58putting a bind there and yeah, in a perfect world, I guess you say, look, well, if Lamar runs for 10
08:03yards, he runs for 10 yards. Don't let anybody run past you. Uh, but it all that's the, that's
08:09how it snowballs when you're facing a quarterback like Lamar Jackson, multiple, multiple mistakes
08:14end up making one huge mistake. Well, and this is where you realize like, okay, they've played
08:19some running quarterbacks this year. This is a different dude and it's different. It's a different
08:24Lamar. It's a different, it's a different, right. It's a different dude than Lamar Jackson,
08:28whatever version was last year. But like this year, like if that were Anthony Richardson,
08:33he's not trying to finesse a ball to whoever the Colts tight end is. Right. He's probably
08:37talking to the ball and running. He would have thrown it. Yeah. Right. He would have sailed it.
08:42We'll have a similarly, like he probably would have put his head down and tried his hardest to
08:45get injured with you tackling last night. CJ Stroud would have missed it. Uh, yes. If he had
08:50a wide open, uh, tight end, which he did, he did exactly that. He was a wide open wide open guys.
08:58No, but I was like the Dalton Schultz one. Oh yeah. Yeah. He was wide wide open. Yes. Yes.
09:03Size 72 font wide open. I don't want to hear about how CJ was getting hit as he threw it.
09:06Like he didn't have to, he didn't have to, he could have thrown it earlier. Yeah. Or you
09:10thrown it earlier. Just flick it. He was, he was like, he was, he, he was putting sauce on it.
09:15You know what I mean? Um, so that catch and run by Mark Andrews, let's like Lamar Jackson is just
09:22a beast, man. Led to this. Here inside the 10 second down Jackson fakes the jib and he's
09:30scrambling squares up. How can they not get any throws to the end zone? Caught touchdown.
09:36I say a lot accident all day to throw what a play as the Texans could not bring him down
09:44and they get the touchdown pass nine yards. Lamar Jackson too. He, uh, he had all day to throw
09:51cause he created all day. He took 24 hours and turned it into 48 hours is what he did on that
09:56play. He's in the throw man. If you had, if you had cashed out on the game at that point,
10:02still only tended to at that point. But if you, it's kind of like credit to you,
10:06faithful listener, if you kind of saw the way the wind was blowing with this game, like, yeah,
10:10I know it's tended to, but I'll be back for Beyonce in a few minutes. If you didn't see that
10:14play, go back and find it. Go out of your way to find it. Lamar Jackson is not only the amount of
10:19time he, that would have been a play where I would have been like, wow. Even if he threw incomplete
10:23over likely his head, like man, the amount of time he created with his legs, he threw a missile
10:29falling backwards and it wasn't even fun. He was like backpedaling. Yeah. Like it wasn't like
10:33that. He had a throwaway earlier that was impressive because he was backpedaling as he
10:37threw it and he threw it away, but it was like, it was not in harm's way or anything.
10:41Yeah. That, so that one, that's the classic. All right. Quarterback extends it tight end,
10:47finds an open spot in the end zone. If it was just that play, it wouldn't have bothered me
10:52that much. It was the Mark Andrews touchdown in the second half where it was just flat out.
10:57Like, all right, what are you doing guys? All right. He's just, it's a classic,
11:01um, a little one yard flick pass. I think it was a spider wide banana. Basically it was getting
11:06some spider wide banana love on Twitter. Yeah. So, um, yeah, it's a John Gruden call for those
11:11who don't know for the kids. Yeah. For the kids out there. Love a little John Gruden audio.
11:17Kids. Gruden used to be a head coach in the NFL. Now he clowns other teams on social media.
11:22We'll get to that many boomers. He didn't quite understand how to use email properly.
11:27He was done in by emails, making a good living at Barstool now probably.
11:31Um, so the Texans go into the half at 17 to two. So the most optimistic of us were like, all right,
11:38they get the ball to start the second half and they're at home sets, you know, where they've
11:42played well this year at home. So maybe they figure some things out. It's a long halftime.
11:47You know, maybe a lot of time to figure some things out. Right. Yeah. Adjustments. You're
11:51the team trailing 17 to two. This is more time to make it just all kinds of extra time. Oh,
11:56beautiful. Beautiful. And shout out to Beyonce. Lovely performance. Um, still trying to figure
12:01out what all the groups of people were doing out there, but it was a, but then I think it's,
12:05you know, I think I'm supposed to be confused by that. Um, so they come out of the locker room in
12:09the second half and they get the ball. It's third and two first series of downs. I'm like, all right,
12:14short yard, third and two, just where the Texans thrive all the time. Sarcasm. This happened third
12:21down and less than three yards across the Houston 37 yard line. Nico in motion to the right,
12:25straddle the gun. Here's the snap. CJ looking, stepping out to the right and he's going to throw
12:29it down field and it's intercepted inside the 40 yard line. It's taken by Kyle Hamilton, the safety
12:36getting in front of the target. And I good enough. We know what happened. And then it was Kyle
12:41Hamilton is just the further salt in the wounds. Right? Yeah. It could have been a Texan. The
12:46Canyon, but Kenyon green was probably offering emotional support. Maybe, maybe people discount
12:52that, but he was there. Can you apparently got in with dubs the end of the game? I wouldn't know.
12:58I didn't watch any of those. Um, but CJ Stroud interception. Hey, by the way, that's that drive.
13:06It ended with the likely touchdown that we just played started at the one yard line.
13:11That's a 99 yard drive. Um, but this drive, uh, subsequent drive shroud interception.
13:17This only took two plays, big chunk play by Derek Henry. Then this three men in the backfield. Now
13:24Henry, one of them with Lamar Jackson in the middle of that diamond set and Jackson with
13:29the keeper right side across the 45, 40, 30, right sideline, 20, 15, 10, five touchdown Lamar Jackson.
13:37He was toying with Bullock on the back end because he knew Bullock couldn't run him down. He goes.
13:47He did. He was, you can see him looking back at Bullock who knows what he was saying to him.
13:51That's I promise you people, those are the only highlights that's it. We're done with it. But I,
13:55I D I think this illustrates this game was almost like putting a painting up on the wall of like,
14:03okay, here's everything that's wrong with this team. Here's everything that's been right with
14:07this team, but everything that's been wrong with this, you had it all within a matter of probably
14:12like 10 minutes of clock time in the game, starting with the Townsend pun, Lassiter safety,
14:18Pierce kickoff return sequence, D'Amico preaches complimentary football. This is the ultimate setup
14:23for complimentary football in a big game. And after those three plays, offensive failure on
14:28fourth down defense gives up a huge chunk plate. That's been an Achilles heel. They give up a
14:33touchdown to a tight end. Defending tight ends has been an Achilles heel. CJ's decision-making
14:38has been an Achilles heel. He throws a pick and then they look at the Lamar Jackson, the Lamar
14:43Jackson touchdown run looked a lot like that tight end of the Oconquo touchdown against the Titans.
14:49Yeah. Where it's like, yeah, like, well, the Halen Bullock's giving chase and that's about it.
14:53And it also honestly, there were times in that game where you could tell the defensive
14:58ends had been instructed on that specific play to either play just the run or, or just to play
15:02Lamar Jackson and you try to mix and match. And, and, you know, on that specific play, I think
15:07will Anderson was supposed to make a read and he had a blocker in front of them that he just kind
15:11of ignored. And he went after the run and then Christian Harris bit inside too. So that wasn't,
15:17that wasn't a play call or anything. That was just, to me, it looked like poor fundamental
15:20football by the defense. It was just, it was it, which is what happens to defenses. If you,
15:26if you break down and discipline at all versus Lamar Jackson and Derek Henry, they're going to,
15:30they're going to burn you for it. And it goes to show you the long game too. That was the first
15:35option play that Lamar Jackson kept on the whole game. Yeah. You know, so he set it up,
15:40handing it to Henry, handing it to Henry every time. Hey, he's always just handing it to Henry
15:44the whole time. You know, they, Hey, they're up 17 to two. They're probably just going to
15:47play it close to the vest and handed it. Nope. Keeps it and untouched. Yeah. 48 yards untouched.
15:52Nobody got near him. And it's, and it is like, this is where they turn, they turn defenses into
15:58mush mentally because they put you in so many binds and you have to make so many decisions.
16:03And if you make the wrong decision, they're, they're going to gas you for it. And that was
16:08just, it was just poor, poor fundamental. You know, I've, I say this about the, the offense
16:13all year long. Like there's stuff out there that looks like high school kids could do it. That
16:17play right there. Yeah. High school kids would have made those reads better. It was really bad.
16:22What are we confident in, in this team after yesterday? Like, is there anything,
16:26is there anything that happened? I mean, the offense is the offense. Is there anything that
16:28happened defensively yesterday where you're like looking at the post season differently?
16:32Okay. So they still have in that game, they still showed an ability to sometimes
16:37stem the tide by making big plays for a sack or a tackle for a loss. You know,
16:43Will Anderson made some really good plays in that game. Yeah. Kamari Lassiter at a safety
16:47and that's who they are. You know, they're not, they're not the type of defense where you felt
16:52like they're so dominant that they can just line up and get a stop whenever they need to. It's
16:57like, that's what they're just shy of being in a genuinely elite defense because they'll allow
17:03drives. They'll allow movement. You know, they'll get to that team. Yeah. They'll allow passing
17:08touchdowns. And so you can't, at some point you got to offset that with big plays and they just
17:14couldn't make enough of those big plays versus that offense. Yeah. And special teams, I guess,
17:18but man, this offense is broke. Yeah, it is. It is. CJ is just, that was a really,
17:24really bad performance out of CJ. You can't, you can't make any excuses for it. He, he showed up
17:29in it after a game. I, I was hoping that man, CJ made some bad mistakes at the end of that chiefs
17:35game. It was that were on him, you know, running out of bounds and taking that sack on the,
17:40in the Kansas city game. Yeah. The delay game, like him and Bobby slow it perhaps to blame on
17:45that. But he made bad mistakes at the end of that game. Then he comes out and I thought,
17:49all right, well maybe he'll really rebound. And no, he actually just continued it and made,
17:54made bad decisions and took sacks last night that he shouldn't take.
17:57I can ask you, do you think like the, like there's like for CJ, there's,
18:02this shouldn't be the case. I feel silly asking this. Is there like a tank Dell hangover going
18:06on with that? Yeah, I think, Oh, a hundred percent. I think that's in play. Like you can't,
18:10which you can't, you can't have that. It doesn't look in this rag. It bothers me that some people
18:15have pointed out like that. If you have any issue with silly even asking what bothers me that like
18:19people will say that if you have any issue with CJ crying in the middle of a football game
18:24last week, that it's a, it's evidence of male toxicity or something or toxic masculinity.
18:29Like, no, there's not a single person. I saw so many people last week say like, Oh,
18:33people still think men shouldn't cry. There's not a person out there anymore that thinks men
18:37should never cry. Right. But if you're in a position of leadership, whether you're a man,
18:42a woman, non-binary, I don't care when you're in a position of leadership, it's stoicism is
18:48important. There's a certain detachment from emotion you have to have when other people are
18:53relying on you. And so, yes, I do think that when somebody has an orthopedic injury, no matter how
18:59horrific it is, it's an orthopedic injury. It's football. It happens. You're in a leadership role.
19:05Be a leader. Um, it has nothing to do with whether you're a man or whether you're a woman or
19:10anything like that. I don't care if, if other players, non-QBs are crying in the middle of
19:14the game, as long as they get it together. Um, but, but even then I'm like, I'm not going to
19:20crush him for it. Things happen. He's young, but then he goes out and has this performance. I,
19:25yeah, I have no choice, but to believe that maybe there is some emotional effect from that still.
19:30And that, that scares the hell out of me. Well, that's not acceptable. And I'm not trying to be
19:35mean. No, no. That's the job description. You have to know how to compartmentalize and detach
19:41from some of the more human things when you're in a position of leadership or you're an NFL
19:45quarterback. And you're only paying 9 million for it now. There will come a day when you're
19:48paying 60 million for it. You know what I mean? Like that's like, so yeah, it's, it,
19:53they'd been outscored 41 to three since the tank Dell injury. I think it's hard not to
19:59hypothesize at least like that, that is having an effect. And I'm not even talking about having
20:04an effect on the offense. Like all of a sudden they removed him and boy, they can't run all
20:08these plays. So they stink. CJ Stroud looked like he was in a complete funk yesterday,
20:14sitting by himself on the bench on the sidelines. Like just he's got to shake himself, man. I don't
20:19care what the cause is. I don't, I honestly, I, I don't even care if it's because he's banged up.
20:24Like you got to like, you're not on the injury report, you know? So you, whatever it is,
20:29you got to figure it out, man. You, you, you made it. You had a CJ Stroud parade this off season
20:36celebrating CJ Stroud. And I'm not saying CJ has that type of personality. That's me, me,
20:41me, me. But he said yes to seemingly every podcast doing the radio row at super bowl,
20:45talking a lot of smack too about the Colts. Yeah. But Micah Parsons going on podcasts,
20:50uh, you know, the Micah Parsons bringing up, uh, you know, uh, how do you know what a dog is?
20:55And CJ saying you're sitting next to one, man. Yeah. This is very undog like the last few weeks.
21:00It's a very, very, very undog, very uncanine going on right now. It's an insult to dogs
21:07actually, which is, and it's look, I'm ultimately in the long run. I think this could end up being
21:13a really good season for CJ to have had because you know, Andre's Johnson said this on the pivot
21:19podcast a few weeks ago, and I don't want to misquote him or paraphrase it, but Andre basically
21:25maybe lent credence to the notion that these guys might've heard, they might've had a little too
21:31much positivity in the off season because they got, they got shellacked by the Ravens in the
21:35playoffs. And at that point I was thinking like, all right, well, this is good because they learned
21:39to like, okay, we're not ready to play with the big boys yet. We got to go somewhere.
21:43And I almost feel like the off season acquisitions made people feel like, oh, well, there we go.
21:48We fixed it. Now we can play with the big boys. But some of the players and the younger players
21:52on the team still didn't really truly understand how hard the NFL is clearly. Um, because they'd
21:57had a promising season, but it wasn't like they had an awesome offensive season last year to be
22:01genuinely good, man. It's a whole different level. Yep. And you don't have time to, you don't have
22:05time to, you don't have time to feel sorry for yourself. No, you don't. Especially as a quarterback.