The Defensive Line has to Earn its Money

Just a quick observation here: Both Texas pro football teams have followed a similar tack where they have invested a goodly number of top draft picks on defensive players. In Dallas today, the cowsheep fans are openly questioning the defense of Coach "Fix-It" after it ended up getting steam-rolled by Tom Brady and the Pats. It looks even worse when you consider the fact that the Patriots gave up on the run completely when their RB went down. They relied exclusively on the pass, Dallas KNEW they were going to pass and still couldn't stop them to save their lives. Somewhere in New York, Bill Parcells can be heard snickering...no wait: that was me...

In Houston, we are still waiting for this strategy to pay off and judging from yesterday's results, we might just be in for a long wait. The Jaguars simply lined up and pimp-slapped the Texans' defense by shoving the ball right down the throats of what was supposed to be a good defensive line manned by 3 no.1 picks. It was worse than butt-ugly: pitiful tackling - guys were either caught out of position or caught reaching to make arm tackles. 9 total tackles from the defensive line (TJ had 1 while MW had 2). The defense was steamrolled by the Jaguars for 244 rushing yards. The defense did not force a single Jacksonville punt. I didn't expect to see this team get its ass handed to it in the way I saw yesterday. I can accept them losing games but to lose in the manner in which they did yesterday is simply unacceptable. If they (Texans) are going to go out and play like boobs, then McNair might as well bring back the head boob - Dom - to lead his circus.

Very disappointing: I expected to see much more progress than I've seen so far (especially from MW) and I don't know if this is just a temporary setback or that the Jaguars exposed the Texans to be the pretenders that they looked like yesterday.

 

the d-line and the o-line were awful yesterday. the corners led our team in tackles. that's stupid. i heard a stat on the radio...there were roughly 63 offensive Jaguar snaps yesterday...there were only 9 Texans defensive line tackles.

 

I would actually say the LB's played much worse than the DL. There's only so much you can do when the opposing team runs plays consisting of runs to the outside and screen passes. It was GREAT playcalling on the Jags part all day. I've haven't seen the Texans stop a sweep or screen pass all year.

 

It was great to see Travis Johnson celebrating every time someone made a tackle on Sunday. Even when we were down by 20+ points...



I think even the CBS announcer rightfully called him out on it.

 

"some"? pgabriel didn't watch the game; not after baby vince was ruled out. the offense deserves *most* of the blame, if not all of it - in fact, that was one of the greatest defensive performances i've ever seen, given the circumstances: seven of tennessee's 16 possessions began in houston territory; another began on their 49. that's what happens when you turn the ball over six times and generate 34 yards of total offense in a half.

but sure, let's rip the DL - yep, they were the problem. they held tennessee to 14 plays in the 4Q, forcing three punts and a FG despite tennessee TWICE taking over in texan territory, once on the 33, the other on the 17.

same thing happened last year: casual fans lock in and won't let go. the "DL" is this year's "david carr." in fact, ripping the DL allows them to avoid confronting a bleaker reality: carr was only a small part of the problem and the only one that's been expelled. admitting the offense is still putrid means they'd have to backtrack on their constant, "it's carr!!" chants of last year.

so rip the DL they do.

 

oops! my bad - i thought this was a thread about the TITAN game (might as well be)... LOL! wow, what a difference a week makes, huh?

still, the sentiment about singling out the DL remains.

 

That's my bad for bumping it up.

Just venting about TJ.

 

Maybe the reason the focus is on the DL and Carr and the like is that those are the high-paid guys / high-round picks who are *supposed* to be the top players. You need your players to perform up to expectations for a team to do well - and the team was built around a strong, expensive DL that really hasn't done so well the last few weeks.

 

and that's the problem. even if they do play up to expectations... they still need the other 47 players to do their job, too - no one player is going to carry this, or any other, team.

why is mario williams and david carr more critical to our success than chester pitts or danny clark or demarcus faggins? that's such a lazy, simplistic approach.

 

point stands: the DL is not among our top problems, and no amount of "*******"s, "dumbass"es or "jerk"s can cover up how wrong you are for continually pointing it out.

 

here's a suggestion: rather than spewing vitriol that does nothing to support your point of view, how about providing a salient counterpoint? it takes however many guys every week to make this thing work, all of them doing their job. the DL isn't any more or less important in that equation than the OL, linebacker or secondary.

 

Sure - but I'm not sure what the point is. You harp on the point that the team has a lot of problems all the time. No one has ever disagreed with that. But every time people focus on one, you say "stop focusing on that problem!". If you don't focus on any problems, how do you expect things to improve? Just because people said the DL needs to perform to expectations doesn't mean people think that fixes all of the team's problems.

Two things here - Williams and Carr are more critical because that's how the team was built. It was built to excel at those positions (thus the spending of that kind of money at those positions) and be average/good at others - you can't be great everywhere. If your great players suck, you have a much bigger problem than if your average players suck.

Beyond just performance, they are also much harder to replace. If your #1 pick isn't performing, you have a much bigger problem to solve than if your 5th round pick isn't, because he's consuming a much bigger part of your cap and is much harder to switch out and find a replacement for. Faggins and Pitts can be replaced if they suck. Mario Williams can't - that's why it's going to be a bigger concern.

 

yes, i did - what relevance does that have to a discussion about the houston texans? any at all?

i was dead wrong about tennessee and i underestimated jeff fisher and their front office; i've said this 3 or 4 times already. and as yesterday proved, it ain't all about baby vince.

quite good. kyle vanden bosch is probably its best player, a 7-year vet. he had 4 sacks in his first four years, btw. hell, since 2006, he has exactly two more sacks than mario williams. haynesworth is 1A; he's in his sixth year; laboy his fourth. they've now been playing together for three years.

in their first year together, the D ranked 19th; last year: 32nd. this year, 6th. maybe we should give a unit anchored by four players who are 25, 23, 22 and 20 just a wee bit more time to gel, mature, etc.