Two weeks into the season, the Texans are 0-2, and the strange part is that Sunday’s 20-6 loss to the Bengals never really looked like a 20-6 loss. The box score says one thing.
The way the game unfolded says something a lot closer. Houston moved the ball, stayed on the field, and kept the numbers in its favor in several key spots.
None of it changed the result.
The Texans finished with more total yards, 374 to 267, and they threw for 314 yards to Cincinnati’s 182. They also had more first downs, more plays, and more red-zone trips.
They didn’t turn it over. They even held the ball nearly as long as the Bengals, 29:11 to 30:49.
And yet the scoreboard never reflected any of that. Houston is now up to 755 yards of total offense through two games, but only 37 points to show for it - more than 20 yards per point, a number worth watching because it sits at the top of the league and tells its own story about how this team is finishing drives.
Will Anderson was one of the few bright spots. He came away with eight tackles, including multiple tackles for loss, and added his first sack of the season.
He and Danielle Hunter both got to Joe Burrow, and Burrow was under heat all afternoon, including on both touchdown passes. The second score had some shaky work from Reed Blankenship, but it still came after Burrow was chased and had to escape the rush.
That’s what the best players do: they turn pressure into production.
The defense, at least, did enough to make Houston feel like it should have had a chance. Holding the Bengals to 20 points usually puts you in the neighborhood of a win.
But the Texans still haven’t created a turnover through two games, and that matters. Sometimes the quarterback on the other side is simply better, and that may have been part of what happened here.
Even so, the defense showed up.
The messy part came from the things Houston doesn’t normally want to see become habits. There was a muffed field goal, and Ka’imi Fairbairn missed from 58 yards.
That one is hard to pin on him. The punting game also went sideways, and a targeting penalty helped give Cincinnati the ball in Texans territory.
It was the kind of day the Texans will want back, even if those mistakes weren’t the whole reason they lost.
The biggest moment came on fourth-and-one, when DeMeco Ryans chose a 58-yard field goal instead of going for it. The call was low percentage, and the math crowd would have screamed for aggression.
But this is also a team that went a combined 5-for-21 on third and fourth down. The Bengals’ defense may be better than it was a year ago, but Houston’s short-yardage issues have become a familiar problem.
That’s what makes the decision so frustrating and so understandable at the same time. Ryans had just watched the offense fail on third-and-one on the previous play.
After enough of those, hesitation makes sense.
That short-yardage softness is the real ugly part. It isn’t new.
New linemen have come in. A new featured back has arrived.
There’s even a new offensive coordinator in the second year of the Ryans era. The problem still keeps showing up in the same places.
This offense can move the ball between the 20s. It still hasn’t proven it can finish when the field shrinks.
C.J. Stroud deserves his own lane in all of this, and two games is nowhere near enough to hand out a final verdict.
This is just one data point out of 17, and nobody should be making sweeping declarations this early. But the first two games have already shown something clear enough to talk about: two quarterbacks generally viewed among the elite made plays Stroud didn’t.
That doesn’t erase the fact that he’s already shown he can play at a high level, and it doesn’t mean the blame lands on him alone. Offensive line issues, receiver issues, coaching issues - all of that belongs in the conversation.
Still, the standard for the position is ruthless. Elite quarterbacks make the plays that win these games.
Good quarterbacks don’t always do that. Stroud has shown he can be a good NFL quarterback, one who belongs among the league’s 32 starters and probably starts for about half the teams in football.
But he also hasn’t been the player he was as a rookie. When he’s right, he manages the game well.
The Texans need more than that if they’re going to climb out of 0-2.
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Jonathan Taylor is the obvious focal point for the Colts, and the Texans will lean on a defense that has been strong against the run through two games, sitting sixth in rushing yards allowed. If Houston can keep Taylor in check, it would go a long way toward steadying a start that has yet to find its first breakthrough and could shape how the division race looks before September even closes. [Read more 🡒]