Except you guys seem to be completely ignoring the stellar run defense from last season, its clearly not just a fluke from this year. And like others pointed out, regardless of how many time per game you are running the ball, that does not affect YPC. And the Texans are among the best at limiting a RB's ypc
rhino hit the nail on the head. all the evidence points to the texans run defense being amongst the top 5 in the league. and cushing isn't even back yet. ohhhhhhhhh man.
The Raiders offensive line is terrible in pass protection, so they'll look to run McFadden early and often. Gradkowski has a lot more pocket awareness than Campbell which is why he's starting. He lacks the accuracy and arm strength Campbell has, however. But he is a much better leader, very fiery guy... takes command of the huddle. Zach Miller should be targeted pretty frequently, he's one of the better route-running TE's in the league. Asomugha will shut down his side of the field which means whoever is on the other side will have to deal with UH grad Stanford Routt (who kind of sucks sometimes). The Raiders are one of the worst teams in the league when it comes to getting interceptions because of their stubborn commitment to bump and run. This bodes very well for Jacoby Jones, who should be matched up with a pretty inexperienced CB most of the time. I'd look for Arian Foster to have a good day. The Raiders always give up 2-3 big plays per game.
Exactly. Someone (maybe you?) posted a stat saying we are one of the best run defenses in the league over the last 16 games, not just the last 3.
All well and good but in the grand scheme of things, what happened last year is not all that relevant right now and counts for very little. Been looking at the latest Football Outsiders analysis and it is brutal. They rank the Texans' defense dead last in total defense. The Texans have a DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) of 37.8% for a rank of 32nd. Note: a positive number represents more scoring so a defense is better when this number is negative. Contrast that to Pitt who is 1st with a DVOA of -33.7% for total defense. Texans have a DVOA of 63.9% for pass defense giving them a rank of 32nd and a DVOA of -15.4% for rush defense giving them a rank of 11th. By way of comparison, Pitt has a DVOA of -29.45 for pass defense giving them a rank of 3rd and a a DVOA of -40.5% in rush defense also giving them a rank of 3rd. As you can see so far the 2010 edition of the Texans' defense is just not that good right now.
interesting....man i dont know how they come up with some of these stats i happen to agree that the Texans D is a little over rated...i think they played well against the Colts....but not so well against the Redskins and terrible vs Dallas. Itll be interesting to see how they perform against an offense that a true "top" defense should manhandle
1) Not ignoring it. When at full strength, we've got two dynamite LBs, a hard hitting strong safety, and fair help from Smith. 2) YPC would be determined not just by us, but by the quality of the run game we're facing, right? You're still DETERMINED that it's all about us and has nothing to do with who we're playing. IND: 4.4 YPC on us, 3.3 on the year. WAS: 1.1 on us, 3.9 on the year DAL: 3.7 YPC on us, 3.5 on the year So, your argument looks good in the Washington game. But IND and DAL had more success running on us than than their early season average. As to last year, consider the schedule again. Just to play along. Here's who we played: Jets - #1 rushing offense in the league, crushed us for 190 on ground Ten (twice) - #2 rushing team in the league, broke us for 240 in game 1 and 228 in Nov. MIA - #4, missing Ronnie Brown, only 60 yds CIN - #9, 46 yds for a sub-50 hat trick Jax (twice) - #10, 185 ground yards in Wk3, 107 in Wk 13 NE - #12, gain 74 yds BUF - #16, gain 97 yds STL - #20, gained 88 yds OAK - #21, we stop them cold with only 45 yds SF - #25, held to 59 yds SEA - #26, held to 62 yds ARI - #28, another strong showing - 44 yards IND (twice) - worst in the league, 72 and then 114 yds We had a very good year against the run. Pollard and Cushing were fantastic, and Dunta deserves credit too. Bush made it clear that he wanted to swarm runners coming off the edge. Teams that enjoyed more success against us than on average: Jets, TEN, JAX (1), IND (1) Teams we held below their average: Miami, CIN, Jax (1), NE, BUF, STL, OAK, SF, SEA, ARI, IND (1) Looks good for the most part, but I'd still point out that it looks like we feasted on some bottom rung rushing teams. When we faced strong ones, they killed us - with the exceptions being the Bengals (period) and Dolphins (in the middle of an end of season complete tailspin). Endpoint: I'm not at all saying the Texans run defense is secretly crummy. It's clearly a strength, and one that will improve as Cushing returns. What I AM saying is puffing our chest out over having the best rushing D in the league is maybe a bit premature, presumptuous, and ahead of things when we haven't faced a quality run game yet. Similar to the few posters that went nuts over Foster's opening game and the Texans being ranked int eh top 3 after week 2. Long season, let's see how it plays out and root for the very best.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_Outsiders#DVOA Put simply, it's designed to put results into perspective. If you play Tampa Bay and they manage 17, it isn't as impressive as when you hold NE or IND to only 17. It goes far deeper than that, but that should give you a very basic gest of the idea.
I think emjohn is spot on in cautioning against placing too much emphasis on what the Texans' did last year against the run. Clearly their run defense is a strength but all that will mean is that teams will simply shift their attention to exploiting their horrendous pass defense. Here's what I don't understand: for years now they have drafted and tried just about everything to improve their defense yet they still cannot generate much heat on opposing QBs. It all starts with a good pass rush and that is the one area this defense has fallen short this year save for the Colts game. The other thing that really worries me is that opposing receivers are not only getting open but are literally running away from our secondary and unless they can get a handle on that, it figures to be a loooooonnnng season.
That's not always the case. In the dallass game, Romo was getting rid of the ball 2 seconds after the snap. Lawrence Taylor in his prime couldn't generate a pass rush in that amount of time. That falls on the DBs, not the D line.
They did have more short passes than long ones, but in that case, you get your hands up in the passing lanes at least. And when Romo did take 5 or 7 step drops, he was barely even touched. The pass rush was horrid, even taking the short game into account.
The Cows used this strategy primarily because of their concerns about weaknesses in their OL and not because of any great fear of the Texans' defensive line or pass rush. One thing they did do well was scheme for Mario's bull rush through the use of the draw. It's been 4 years now and Mario's pass rushing technique still leaves a lot to be desired. And you can expect other teams to adopt a similar tactic when they face the Texans so it's up to MW to break out some more moves and quickly.
The Texans didn't start being a good run defense this season. They have actually been superb versus the run ever since game 4/5 last season, after the disastrous start to the season. Many people don't know that Mario is actually a much better run-stopper than he is a pass rusher. The issues they had at the start of the season were due to simple correctable mistakes, and once those were fixed, very few people were able to run against the Texans successfully. The issue since has always been the secondary. The Dallas game was more the exception than the rule -- for whatever reason, Dallas likes to run draw plays more than anybody else in the league, and we're the worst at defending draw plays. It's not the first time that has happened. The type of run defense you saw in Games 1 and 2 are what you should always expect from this Texans defensive unit. Most RBs will struggle to exceed 4 ypc against them.
I don't think we need AJ to win this one, so keep him on the sideline. We are probably going to run the ball anyway against this (run) defense. I would also like to see Dickerson getting some playing time (with AJ out). Texans: 31 Raiders: 13
