Unlike basketball or baseball, I'm more of a casual fan when it comes to football. And I don't really care for the stats but rather just enjoy watching the game. But all the dogging on the Texans offense during the offseason raised my eyebrows a bit. Because I generally have felt that the Texans offense was quite excellent, especially when compared to other teams I've watched over the season. So I decide to look up some stats and found this. FootballOutsiders per drive stat. Now this is a neat stat IMO, because it isolates the offense and take away some of the problems with not having the ball enough and such. http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/drivestats Basically, the Texans rank 1st in yards, 4th in scoring, 4th in TDs, 5th in punts(or lack thereof), 8th in TOs, and DEAD FREAKING LAST in starting field position. The dead last in starting field position can be directly attributed to the defense being dead last in points given up per drive, and 28th in creating TOs, and bad special teams. Now, I can understand the yards numbers being inflated. After all, it's much easier to rack up yards when starting from your own 20 than from the opponents 30. But the points/TD numbers don't lie. When the Texans get the ball, they score as well as any team in the NFL despite having the worst starting field position. I honestly don't know why people can complain about the offense. Despite having absolutely zero help from the defense, they get yards, they score, they don't turn the ball over too much, and they generally get the ball into field goal position(5th least punts). As much as I want Gary Kubiak run out of town, I can't help but at least be impressed by his running of the offense. Defense, OTOH, is another matter. And why I personally believe our entire offseason should revolved around upgrading in that area. It also raised some of my hope for next year, assuming Wade Phillips is as good McNair thinks he is.
people don't complain about the offense do they? Ever since Arian showed up our offense is balanced. The coaching is what sucks. Pubes can't get his team to play the 1st half of games. I do think we need a backup plan for Shaub though. I just don't see him getting any better and think he'll regress from this point on.
There is no excuse for how bad our defense was, but the offense didn't help by consistently coming out flat and not competing in the first half of games, thus keeping the defense on the field more and giving the other team all the momentum. You could go search through many threads from the season and see this debate. Some argue that it doesn't really matter that they come out flat, since by the end of the game they are putting up good numbers. I think balance and consistency is vital to winning -- you have to control the ball to win.
If you average 24 ppg, and you go 6-10...your offense isn't your problem. If you are 1st in rz%, your offense isn't the issue. Hate to say it, but its 2 reasons why people don't like the O. Schaub being the QB (2006 still hurts those losers) and Kubiak. Point blank period.
The only problem with our offense is that we did not run the ball enough when the run seemed to be working better than the pass. So I guess this falls on coaching. They are too pass happy at times which leads to less time of possession and keeps our defense on the field for longer.
Sad that they did that. Only games I can say the offense wasn't flat early was the 1st indy game, oakland, san diego, denver, nyj to a certain degree, and uhhh...that it? Denver maybe? Playcalling is hampering them also though. 2nd indy game, sd game, etc...
I'm not sure I get the whole 1st half argument. If a basketball team keeps scoring 40s in the 1st halves, and 60s in the 2nd halves, what's the complaint? Just take the Super Bowl for example. The Packers scored 21 points off of turnovers. They zero points between the end 2nd Q and start of 4th Q. At which yet another turnover gave them their final TD drive. Do Packer fans complain that their offense sucks because they can't score without sick field position? Or that they went something like 20+ minutes without a single point? Maybe it's just me, but I find ALL top offenses go through droughts all the time. Even some of the most prolific offenses in NFL history go through ups and downs. It seems to be just the nature of football to me. Considering the whole 1st-half thing isn't a trend that goes back throughout Kubiak's tenure, I don't see why people think its something that's more than just an aberration.
Why would anyone start a thread to defend Jacoby Jones and Steve Slaton? The Texans' offense even when they had great field position stunk it up. It was usually when they had poor field position, down by at least a touchdown and sometime within the second half that they started clicking, sometimes against prevent defense. When the offense is stagnant it puts your defense on the field more than they should be. Besides, our defense gave up big plays and lots of points. Our ****ty field position can be thanked to the likes of Slaton (19.7 yards per kick return!) and Jacoby Jones (7.0 yards per punt return!). Every talks about Kube's the offensive guru. You're right meh, the Kube is no guru. 10 games into the season I was screaming for him to pull both Slaton and Jones. He didn't substitute for Slaton till the Baltimore game and never substituted for Jones (which is why we drafted Holliday). Shouldn't such a great offensive mind understand the importance of field position?
I agree 100%. I'll go this route: How many times to you see any team in the 20s at half? It's not a constant thing. A halftime score is something like 14-10, not 24-20. It's like you said with the basketball analogy. Look at college basketball...games are 32-29 at half and end 80-78. Does that excuse the flat starts? No, not a chance. But it does tell you something about how great a lot of these teams are at halftime adjustments.
Other than the 2nd Colts game, due to their defense being super-geared towards the pass but horrible against the run, I don't see much of a problem with this approach. They do play a west coast offense, and their passes are effective on a per-play basis and fairly high percentage. As the stats indicate, they do move the ball better than any other team in the league each drive. I just see this more as "since they lost then we have to micro-analyze every play that they screwed up". While teams with defenses would win such games, and no one would care.
Forgot to tackle this part(not really)... Kubiak is a bad playcaller...lol cut and dry. Adjusting at half is, lucky for us, what he's good at (Hence the comebacks). But he's awful at playcalling. Can things change for him? Sure, but it better be this year. The front office aren't going to take much more of the bad starts.
The issue isn't that they are bad - it means they are underperforming. If they can do so well for one half, then it's disappointing that they suck so bad the other half because they are clearly capable of being much better. It's like clutch baseball players. If you can bat 0.400 when the game is on the line, all it really means is that you're underperforming or not concentrating or whatever the rest of the time.
See . . . If the offense doesn't score. . . then their is a good chance they may leave the OTHER OFFENSE with a short field. So . . Now . .the horrible defense is facing teams with a short field If the offense is not scoring in the 1st half. . . . could be alot of 3 and outs which means the defense is on the field an aweful lot . . and may get tire See . . while people b**** about the defense. . . but give the offense a pass for its horrible 1st halfs They might wanna take a note of how the Defense shuts teams down in the second half . .. so the offense can 'catch up' Rocket River
I don't think it's worthwhile to compare basketball to football in this case. Football involves a lot more strategy and it's much harder to switch momentum. The Packers example also isn't very worthy, IMO, since they were winning at the time (and they were going against a great defense). IIRC, they also were not going three-and-out during that scoring drought. There's a HUGE difference between getting a first down or two before you punt and going three-and-out, which puts the defense right back on the field ... and in the Texans case, it was a defense that was usually deflated from getting scored on and an opposing offense that had momentum. It's very much a snowball effect. Going through ups and downs is perfectly normal. But consistently starting out flat and having to throw your way back into the game in the second half (when you have the top rusher in football in your backfield) is detrimental. And I blame it more on the coaching/preparation/playcalling than anything, because the offense obviously has the means to do better.
Because our offense is a no-show when we really need them. We'd either be up 21-0 and buckle up because we weren't scoring the rest of the game. Or we'd be down 21-0 at half because we couldn't do anything in the first half. Our offense can't play a full 4 quarters. I wouldn't call our offense elite, an elite offense is what the Patriots had this past season.
So because it's more complex, scoring points is different in football than in basketball? Am I missing the part where outscoring your opponent is the same for both!? So basically if the Texans had a top defense, our offense would be great. But because we had the worst defense in the NFL, our offense is less great. I personally think that because Schaub, AJ, etc. don't play defense, they shouldn't be held accountable for letting opponents score at will. But I guess we agree to disagree here. Packer drives 1 1st down 80yd TD drive 3 and out 47yd TD drive End of Half 3 and out 3 and out 4 and out 3 and out 55yd TD drive 70yd FG drive End of game EVERY team has tons of 3 and outs. The Texans are not alone here, but they are alone in giving up a lot of points during those situations though. You might want to watch some football games that doesn't involve the Texans. Considering Kubiak has been calling plays for 5 years now, and only this year did I start hearing this argument, I don't see why you can attribute this to coaching.
