Week 3 GDT: Carolina Panthers at Houston Texans

[amazingandre]

The negative of the Tampa 2, middle of the field. These LBs arent good enough in coverage. 

[jch1911]

How has it taken Joe Brady / Darnold this long to figure out... just throw to whoever Hargreaves is covering?

Also, I blame this TD on Kirksey's dumba$$ tackling of a sliding QB and ending up going helmet to helmet.... dumb... dumb.... DUMB

[LORK88]

On 9/22/2021 at 11:14 AM, ET80 said:

I don't think this one will be particularly close - the Panthers defense is a crushing unit on several levels, Sam Darnold is demonstrating why he was the #3 pick a few years back, Christian McCaffrey is the best all around RB in football, DJ Moore and Robby Anderson are the best WRs this Texans team will face to this point in the season... even a fully staffed Texans team would have big problems in this one. (Luckily, they can blame this one on several injuries on both sides of the ball).

Davis Mills has one of the most memorable "welcome to the NFL" games in recent memory, as Derrick Brown and Brian Burns completely evicerate him on every dropback. This team takes a beating, but does put up a valiant effort in a very lopsided loss - the Texans will never seem out of it, despite being out of it from jump street.

Panthers win, 38-6. (Joey Slye misses an XP vs his old team).

Ok that last part is pretty impressive, ET.

[Marco79]

Man, Culley just wasted all the momentum they had building because he was too scared to go for it again. Such a shame. 

[tab]

 

 

[jch1911]

1 minute ago, tab said:

 

 

What's crazier is he is not always throwing to his first read... It looks like 80-90%, he is (but not every single time)

[jch1911]

that's a helmet to helmet!

[jch1911]

Should have blown that dead before Darnold got in... that is, if the NFL cares about player safety.... ahahahahaahahaahahahaaha... made myself laugh

[LORK88]

I applaud Davis Mills effort as he's doing what he can with not much. Our O-line has done him zero favors tonight and he's been tough through it all. Our running game is also trash which doesn't help. I still lean towards feeling that he's not the answer long-term, but I'm intrigued and want to see more of him and how he progresses through the next few games. He made some solid reads and didn't make any stupid throws. I'd love to see him take more chances downfield, but I get that it's hard when he's running for his life. 

[ET80]

So, I'm not as impressed with this L as I was last week. But, I'm not as discouraged as I thought I would be either.

Davis Mills is not as bad as I figured he would be, but a lot of the game was spoonfed to him - quick reads, quicker releases, conservative options. Any deep shots he took were either horribly bad or misreads between Mills and the WRs. I think he's got a shot the next few weeks, but I suspect the only way he'll get any offense going is with very simple offensive schemes.

On defense - well, I think our heavy turnover run is all predicated on Justin Reid reading things pre snap and altering the trajectory of the play; Take that out and the defense is dead in the water.

[Texansfan713]

Kelly's gameplan was horrible last night.  When he finally realized he needs to start being aggressive it was too late. The defense did enough to keep them in the game despite McCaffrey leaving the game. 

[ET80]

True (and perhaps misleading) statement of this week:

Davis Mills looked more prepared and impressive in his first start than Trevor Lawrence did in his first start. (Against a better defense, no less).

[ET80]

2 hours ago, Texansfan713 said:

Kelly's gameplan was horrible last night.  When he finally realized he needs to start being aggressive it was too late. The defense did enough to keep them in the game despite McCaffrey leaving the game. 

I don't think getting aggressive was an option, with a short week and a rookie QB getting his first start. There's also the thought that you can't "break" Mills just yet - if you get him having to make multiple checks, pre snap reads, option routes - he's going to collapse (think Zach Wilson last week, or Sam Darnold vs New England when he was seeing ghosts).

The playbook had to be vanilla, it was the only way to get any offense going and only way to make sure Mills doesn't completely melt down.

Next week? No excuses, Kelly has extra time to put in a more detailed offense.

[LORK88]

2 hours ago, Texansfan713 said:

Kelly's gameplan was horrible last night.  When he finally realized he needs to start being aggressive it was too late. The defense did enough to keep them in the game despite McCaffrey leaving the game. 

It was definitely too bland. I kind of get it having a rookie QB with limited college starts. I think we went a little overboard with the conservativeness as evidenced below.  The follow up tweet to the one below says "on 15 early down runs with the game within one score, the Texans averaged 0.07 yards before contact per carry against the Panthers."