Jump to content

Week 1 GDT: Houston Texans @ New Orleans Saints


amazingandre

Recommended Posts

9 minutes ago, Pastor Dillon said:

I like playing a good team week 1. 

We are either gonna know we suck or know we are pretty good after tonight. 

Not necessarily. We won our first two games back when we went 2-14 in Garys last year. I still remember that Brian Cushing pick 6 on MNF in the opener. I thought we were legit. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, amazingandre said:

Not necessarily. We won our first two games back when we went 2-14 in Garys last year. I still remember that Brian Cushing pick 6 on MNF in the opener. I thought we were legit. 

That year was just a crazy year. Didn’t we win the division the year before and the year after?

pretty much anything that could go wrong, went wrong that year. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Texans actually shut down Brees last time we played, keeping them out of the end zone entirely with a 24-6 victory led by Brian Hoyer, Alfred Blue, Cecil Shorts, and Ryan Griffin.  

Biggest out of division road win in O'Brien era remains the TJ Yates led victory over the playoff bound Bengals back in 2015.  If the Texans are going anywhere this season we have to start winning these games with Saints, Chargers, Chiefs, Ravens, and Bucs on our docket. I'm already marking down the Pats game as an L, so without a quality OOD road win, our top end is 10-6, but that means going 6-0 in our division which is possible, but not probable.  It's time for O'Brien to have his team perform at a level where we do more than hold serve on soft parts of schedules (see also, not getting horribly outcoached and losing to a division foe's backup QB next week like we did in wk 2 vs. Tenn last year). 

O'Brien's teams have also gotten off to very ugly starts the past two seasons and looked horrendous the last two weeks of preseason, so it's time for him to show he can prepare a team to play from day 1 vs. scrambling to fix things on the fly every season (sadly scrambling to fix another botched offseason plan during the final week of preseason actually counts as progress for O'Brien as we're usually a month into the season).  Of course, Payton also has some dubious opening game history to overcome (I think they've lost like 6 straight). 

I'm hopeful we come out aggressive and prepared to go toe to toe with Brees as our QB and his weapons are better than his and it's time to unleash them with full confidence and keep our foot on the peddle. I fear him retreating into grinding clock with pointless early down runs in between the tackles with Duke & Carlos which contrary to popular opinion, doesn't minimize QB exposure as it constantly puts us in obvious passing downs.  If we hear about his commitment to "establish the run at all costs" this season or we continue to feel like having 20 carries by the 3rd quarter is some sort of magic number for success we will know that we're looking at just another season where O'Brien fails to adapt to the talent on the field while stubbornly ramming his outmoded philosophy into the ground.  I do think this is the best run blocking group we've had, but Duke Johnson is even less suited to inside running than Miller was and my high end hopes for Hyde is that he is slightly better than Alfred Blue.  I'm fine with Hyde grinding out 4th quarter leads, not being given token 1st down carries that regularly give us a 50/50 chance of 3rd and long. I hope the TEs and RBs (and slot) are fully integrated into the passing game this year as it's also our most capable group in each regard. 

I am most fearful of hearing "that's where they're gunna miss JD Clowney" about 10 times this game with Kamara gashing us with outside speed as I'm fully prepared for Thomas to get his and probably at least one bomb to Ginn or TQ Smith, but not for them to quick strike via the run game. It would be super nice if someone besides Watt got his mitts on Brees (then helped him up, as he's one of my favorite players and the weekend didn't go so well for fellow Westlake alum Nick Foles). My heart says Texans win in a shootout, my head says Texans manage to scrape to a late 4th quarter lead only to watch Brees march em down for a 2 minute drill clinic. 

Edited by Apollo Stallion
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, amazingandre said:

Not necessarily. We won our first two games back when we went 2-14 in Garys last year. I still remember that Brian Cushing pick 6 on MNF in the opener. I thought we were legit. 

The following week, Nuk Hopkins said hello with his first 100 yard game as a Pro, topped off by a walk off TD in OT. I really thought it was our year, too...then, the bottom fell out.

That season, this was the play that ended the season for us; The minute this happened, all hope vanished and Matt Schaub was officially finished:

Season was unsalvageable from that moment on. 2-0 start... then a 14 game losing streak.

Ouch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/7/2019 at 7:33 AM, ET80 said:

Primetime Watson is 4-1 as a starter, 3-0 last season. His only loss was that SNF game vs the Chiefs, where he threw for 280 yards and 4 TDs (the one where Watt and Mercilius were both lost for the season).

I don't think our defense will be great, but I think it won't give up 40. I actually think this game is the start of the "Zach Cunningham is a beast and everyone is going to remember his name from here on out" year.

We beat Dallas last season, largely in part because we stonewalled Zeke Elliott. 20 carries, 54 yards, was a dominant performance. If you watch that game again, it wasn't Clowney or Watt making the plays, it was Cunningham - he was all over the place, and he didn't get any sort of shine for that day. People will be talking about a #41 on Tuesday morning, but it won't be Alvin Kamara... it'll be Zach Cunningham.

Mark the tape if you will - Cunningham begins the first of many All Pro campaigns on Monday.

Primetime Watson vs home game Primetime Brees should be interesting .Brees' stat line in primetime is absolutely absurd(more absurd than just his usual numbers, which is sayin something). Has like 50+ tds, only 5 interceptions, averaging like 350 yards a game, nearly 9 ypa, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...