right........ agreed - if they play the steelers every week, in pittsburgh, with tomlin and his coaches having weeks to prepare for the game... but not necessarily when they play, roughly, 95% of the other teams in the league who aren't in pittsburgh's class. i put 0.0 stock in sunday's game. i don't anticipate they'll play a better team this year under such one-sided circumstances. i've said the same thing - 6-8 wins; i've never understood the playoff talk. i mean, it's possible, but they have too many glaring holes, imo; not to mention too many teams in their own division to pass. who regresses among IND, JAX, TEN?
How can you put 0 stock in the game? I understand assuming they'd lose...but did you really believe they'd look THAT AWFUL?? They'd be that dominated? Be honest now...if they had somehow won this game, would you still be saying "i put 0.0 stock in sunday's game."???
Texans cannot win anything unless they get a true NFL caliber QB. Both the guys they have had so far in their existence have been pathetic. Matt Schaub looked like he was throwing to steelers players instead of his own receivers. In other words he might be mediocre at best. You cannot win in the NFL without a solid QB (especially with a nonexistent run game) and Matt Schaub is not it. Ravens-24 Texans- 14 (two touchdowns when Ravens have pulled out all their starters) I hope I have to stick my foot in my mouth but in all likelihood I wont have to.
because i don't think you can glean too much from playing a vastly superior team in a hostile environment in your opening week. i think they'd lose that game, in similiar fashion, 8 or 9 out of 10 times. i think the ravens game will be far more telling. i'll say this: i wasn't the least bit surprised - were you? didn't you predict they'd get "hammered"? do you generally look anything but awful when getting "hammered"? the steelers are a really, really, really good football team, and pittsburgh is a tough place to play. probably. i mean, if they had won 24-3 with 47 yards of offense and 3 defensive TDs, i doubt i'd be too impressed. it's opening week; you're working in new players, learning a new system, shaking off the rust - and you have to do in pittsburgh, one of the nfl's toughest venues. i rarely put much, if any, stock in what happens in week 1. as someone noted, the browns were throughly trashed by pittsburgh last year; their season turned out OK.
ok...i suppose i misunderstood your position earlier. when you say, "they'll be fine" your premise is, "this team is going to win about 6 games, and that's fine." my premise is, "this team is going to win about 6 games, and that won't be fine with most people." so no...i wasn't the least bit surprised they'd get hammered...but i'm surprised that someone who thought this was a 9 game winning team this season would be anything but surprised.
i never said, "they'll be fine." i just think sunday's terrible performance will likely be, more or less, an anomaly.
I hope Sunday was an anomaly because I saw some things that really concerned me. I saw our offensive linemen getting pushed so far off the line of scrimmage that they actually tackled our running back on a couple of plays. Kind of hard to find a gap to run through when the guys that are supposed to be blocking for you are instead getting pushed into you. I saw our D-line getting smothered by the Steelers O-line. Mario had a good game, but the other 3 guys looked like boys playing against men. I saw Weaver get quark screwed into the turf so hard that I thought they were going to have to dig him out with a shovel. I saw our LB’s trying to cover the Steelers receivers. WTF? Who decided that was a good idea? I mean, I knew we would lose this game, but I thought we could at least hang until the 2nd quarter. This game was over after about 5 minutes. After that, the Steelers were just toying with us and that is very troubling, no matter how good they are. This is the NFL, not college football. I know the Browns did the same thing last year, but let’s be real. The Steelers could have scored 60 on us if they had wanted to. There shouldn’t be that large a gap between the Steelers and a team expecting to go at least 8-8 this year.
Here's what concerns me about this attitude about the Texans being better than they looked on Sunday and during preseason: On what evidence are you, John McClain and all the rest basing this on? Exactly what have they shown you that leads to believe they are capable of beating Baltimore or anyone else? Is it their dynamic running game? Stellar QB play by Matt Schaub? Their bone crushing, QB devouring defensive line? Their headhunter secondary? I'm not trying to be nasty here because I really don't see where anyone can dismiss the Ravens so easily especially based on what I've seen from the Texans so far. Let's forget the talent disparity for a moment because as you pointed out, Pittsburgh & Dallas are legit contenders for the NFL title. What concerns me is the lack of competitiveness that I'm seeing. This is something that shouldn't be happening - not with this team that's been rebuilt and certainly not with this coaching staff that's been overhauled. And yet, I'm seeing the same type of futility out there that I saw during the Dom's regime. Worse, Kubiak sounded very Dom-like on Monday with his admission that he was at a loss as to what came down on Sunday. Now they can be expected to lose to the better teams like the Steelers and such but this type of lame performance and this befuddlement from the coaching staff is completely unacceptable. I fully understand the magnitude of the hole they are trying to crawl out from but it's not too much to expect that this team had left these types of performances in the past. The time period for those old stale excuses has expired for the Texans. Until I see some concrete evidence to the contrary, I going to accept what I'm seeing out there as reality and that reality thus far says that this team should not be favored to win this Sunday or any other Sunday until they prove that what they are doing actually works in a game setting.
Ok, I was wrong on Adrian Peterson. Nevertheless the Texans will not beat the Ravens. As long as Reeves is on our team, our secondary will get torn up. Also, our RB situation sucks.
You have to look at last season too. It's not like we're coming off a 4-12 season and claiming that we are good enough to make the playoffs. They were 8-8 last year, and were knocking on the door to the playoffs for a while until they lost a tough game in Cleveland. Based on last season and the acquisitions we made (and having healthy bodies again), the expecatations are that we can beat a team like Baltimore, especially at home. I fully expect them to come out and win Sunday. They were a far superior team at home last year than on the road, and unforunately it looks like it may be the same this year based on last week's performance. One bad break on the road and they lose their composure, whereas at home they tend to keep their confidence throughout the game.
for starters, they won't be playing pittsburgh again. in fact, i don't think they'll play a better team this year. they weren't competitive against good teams last year, either, btw. to me, that's ALWAYS the tell-tale sign of where a team is. and the texans last year were firmly in the middle. they played 8 eventual playoff teams and went 2-6 with one of those victories coming against jacksonville's second and third teams. otherwise, the colts battered them in two meetings; jacksonville did, too, in their lone meeting that counted; tenessee built a 30-something point lead in one of their games and swept the series; san diego beat 'em up every bit as thoroughly as pittsburgh did sunday.... so again - last weekend shouldn't have been a giant shock. they're also breaking in a rookie LT and learning a new system on offense. this takes time; i suspect both will get better as the year progresses. i think schaub will, too - keep in mind: sunday was his... 10th(?) career start. if he stays healthy, if johnson stays healthy - the offesne will settle in and get better. i think that may be yours and/or a lot of other people's problem, though, HillBoy: they're not just lagging behind the nfl's elite: they're lagging behind most of the nfl, period. they were far and away the worst franchise in football with a barren roster and an unstable cap situation when kubiak was hired. he had to more or less build from scratch. as far as i'm concerned, this is year 3 of an expansion franchise, only one without any built-in advantages like extra draft choices and a clean cap. it takes YEARS to truly rebuild in the NFL. i think the texans are probably two years away from being where too many people thought they were this year. that could accelerate; hell, they may be catching an early break with all the injuries to jacksonville, tennessee and indianapolis and if they squeeze out of that 3-2, their schedule gets incredibly easier down the stretch. i'm just not ready to put any stock in an ass-kicking on the road from a team as good as pittsburgh. if baltimore kicks them around the same way - then yeah, i think your concerns are legitimate. but pittsburgh is gonna do that to a lot of teams this year.
It was this thread page 1, and that's why I wrote it. Go Texans. I'm tired of getting punked by fans of other teams around here (mid Atlantic area).
i'm kinda relieved someone else said this. i loved watching us beat the jags. but i'm not sure 8-8 means 8-8 when a team isn't playing their starters...and i think people wouldn't have been thrilled at all with 7-9.
