The Jaguars noticed Brown’s ineptitude, as well as that of the rest of the Texans offensive line, and they made an adjustment: blitzing all but 11 passes in the second-half. They still only got 6 actual hurries off of it, but the Texans offense was pretty stifled outside of the long Andre Johnson PA play. Nose tackle Aatiyah Ellison just wreaked havoc on the Texans interior line. All three of them. He picked up 2 quick hurries in a row in the Texans 2 minute drill to get to the should-have-been tying score.

On the opposite side of the ball, the middle of the Jags line took a real beating. While the Texans interior linemen were at least mostly able to limit their bad plays to hurries, Vince Manuwai let Mario Williams come in almost completely untouched. I was also unimpressed with Brad Meester and Uche Nwareri, although it seemed like the pair of rookie tackles were serviceable.

When you pull back and really examine these two squads side-by-side, they are incredibly similar. Each offense has a superstar (Jones-Drew, Johnson), and a pretty good quarterback, a few young playmakers, and a young offensive line with duct tape on the interior. Both defenses struggle against the pass and are better against the run, but find problems pressuring the quarterback even when they do send plenty of men. Of course, the schemes are totally different and the stars dictate the stats, but the results end up eerily similar. If the Texans had gotten the bounces and swept them instead of the other way around…well, I could still be writing this blog in January.

-More arguments for the John Busing is the Anti-Christ club: As soon as Dominique Barber started taking the majority of the snaps in the second quarter, the Jaguars offensive game dramatically slowed down. Not only did they only score 3 points in the second half, but they didn’t have a drive go over 40 yards. That field goal was mostly the fault of the great field position afforded to them by David Andersen coughing the ball up and padding Matt Schaub’s interception totals. If you’re pinning your hope on the 4 game win-streak to take the Texans to 9-7, you could do worse than praying to various Gods and Goddesses that Barber is starting over Busing for the rest of the season.

-You probably knew Rex Grossman was bad. I avoided pointing out the obvious in the first half notes. However, did you know that the PA bomb to Andre Johnson with 11:16 left was the first time that the Texans targeted Reggie Nelson in the entire ballgame? From the way the Jaguars fans talk about him, you’d think he was as bad as Brian Russell. Yet the Texans passing gameplan (and the Jags constant blitzing) made him an complete non-factor for 3/4ths of the game. That was crucial in getting the Jaguars off to their big lead.

- As for the halfback pass, well, I understand a lot of things about it. I understand that the running game in the second half was not going anywhere. I understand you can’t run a screen every play. I understand that it caught the defense off-guard and actually had Joel Dreesen wide open. I understand that they practiced it all week.

This may be the overemotional side of me, but a play like that would have theoretical me, owner of the Texans, firing the coach on the spot. Not even based on the result. It’s all about the game situation. First and goal on the 5, down 11 points. That’s a number where a field goal and a touchdown with a two pointer ties the game. That means that if the Texans took a knee for 3 downs and kicked it, they’d have a 95% chance (88% chance–adjusted for Kris Brown’s year) of making it a one-score game. You can’t run any overly risky plays in that situation. Get stuffed three times, fine. Somebody fumbles it…what else is new? But don’t call a play where your odds of a turnover DRAMATICALLY increase over the regular odds of one when 3 points cuts it to a single-score deficit. That’s flat-out retarded. Kubiak has been a godsend for this organization, but he has no one to blame but himself if he gets fired after making a call like that.

-Maurice Jones-Drew is rubber, and you are glue. Playing the part of “whatever you say”: Every Texans player except Bernard Pollard.

The player most responsible for the poor first half, from the Texans point of view, is LT Duane Brown. He had BY FAR his worst half of the season, blowing two separate chop blocks that led to hurries and Matt Schaub’s shoulder injury. He got turned around on a Ryan Moats run that changed a 5+ yard gain into a 3 yard gain. Finally, a blitzing Darryl Smith nearly stripped Rex Grossman of the ball on what would have been an easy fumble plus return if not for the tuck rule. Not coincidentally, Brown was questionable to even play in the game with a sprained knee. I went over this last week with the Colts’ Charles Johnson: you can play through the pain and still be hurting the team. It’s hard to fault Brown because of the NFL’s macho culture, and the Texans playoff hopes were hanging on by a thread coming into this game, but if Rashad Butler even plays a little worse than Brown, the Texans are probably better off because Schaub would’ve known he had less time to throw.

One thing I discovered while going through all my old Football Prospectus’ for my earlier post on coaching candidates at BRB was this handy little Bill Barnwell/Aaron Schatz essay about the play-action pass. Since this is such an important part of the Texans offense, I thought it’d be revealing to go over optimal play action strategy and see if the Texans were somewhat close to it. This is all just on 2006′s data, so it’s not the gospel truth forever and ever, but it should provide some insight. Here were the conclusions of the study: PA passes on first down were the most effective, PA’s on second and 7+ were the second-most effective. The effectiveness of the play-fake dropped after the 13th time it was used (but so few teams got to 13 plus attempts in one game that those results are sort of meaningless), and not surprisingly, there was a very strong correlation between DVOA on play-action passes and rushing DVOA (.47) and more importantly rushing DVOA in the first half (.51). The conclusion being that teams that rely on the PA should *gasp* be establishing the run in the first half–IF the run is effective!

Gary Kubiak was roundly criticized for his playcalling in the second half of the Colts game, but he actually threw the majority of his PA passes in the half off first down. They didn’t turn out right, but strategically that appears to have solid backing. As someone who has charted his share of Texans games, I think you can pretty much see how effective the team is by how many PA’s they get off. So lets see if there is a correlation with the Texans games the past 8 weeks or so and running the ball early:

Week 13: Texans rush 4 times (17 yards) in the first quarter, score 0 points. The Texans looked sloppy early on, but Grossman’s best drive got them from their own 10 to the Jacksonville 40 based on running, and the running set up a few PA passes. They didn’t score because they were being quarterbacked by Rex Grossman.
Week 12: Texans rush 10 times (51 yards) in the first quarter, score 14 points. The Texans spent the rest of the game having their way with the Colts defense, but got sloppy with the ball in the second half and couldn’t put up enough points to come back from that.
Week 11: Texans rush 5 times (23 yards) in the first quarter, score 7 points. On the first drive, the Texans passed the ball three times in a row and went 3 and out, and they scored their 7 points because Tennessee gave them the ball at the Tennessee 36. The effectiveness was there, but the Texans had a 5-2 Pass-Run ratio on their third drive and didn’t get anything from that either.
Week 9: Texans rush 2 times (10 yards) in the first quarter, score 0 points. They went three and out on passes on the first drive, Schaub got picked off to start the second drive, and Chris “Pee Pants” White false started to ruin a promising third and five on the third drive. The fourth drive was 2-1 P-R as well, and went nowhere. The Texans finally got down to the Colts 2 on the fifth drive, which started with four consecutive Ryan Moats handoffs, before they turned it over.
Week 8: Texans rush 7 times (54 yards) in the first quarter, score 0 points. Two of these runs are Schaub scrambles. The Texans had only one three and out drive in this quarter though, the only reason they didn’t score in it was that they turned the ball over 3 times.
Week 7: Texans rush 8 times (15 yards) in the first quarter, score 7 points. Two of these runs are also Schaub scrambles, both on the first drive, which was a three and out. The run was pretty ineffective, even discounting a -4 yard Slaton run, yet the Texans scored almost as soon as they started using it.
Week 6: Texans rush 7 times (26 yards) in the first quarter, score 7 points. One of these runs is a Schaub scramble. The Texans again didn’t rush almost at all on the first drive, but rode a 59 yard Andre Johnson quick screen to field goal range before a Kris Brown kick was blocked. They were moderately effective when they did rush on the second series, and that culminated in a long touchdown drive.

What to make of this, other than that the Texans turn the ball over way too damn much? A few weeks ago I brought up that the “scripted” portion of the playbook (Kubiak said that they script the first 15 plays or so) was failing the Texans and holding them back in the first quarter. Perhaps the scripting isn’t holding them back so much as an overreliance to the pass on the first drive. Is this an overreaction to teams knowing that Slaton had fumble problems? A way to come out and surprise the opponents? Whatever it is, it’s not working. The Texans should work more on establishing the run game quicker. This was a real shock to my FO training as a “teams run when they win, not win when they rush” disciple. The Texans actually SHOULD be establishing the run more. When they do, great things can happen offensively (Second Colts game).

-Jacques Reeves, or as Steve Tasker would call him, “Jacquez” or “Jacks”, wins the Most Snakebitten Player of the half award. He was the main defender on six plays. First a 20-yard throwaway pass, second, the gorgeous Garrard bomb to Nate Hughes that I don’t think he could have done any better on. On first and goal, he comes up with two huge stops, defensing a lob to Mike Sims-Walker and holding Zach Miller to one yard on a checkdown. Then he gives it all away by playing too deep on third down and letting Ernest Wilford get an easy TD catch right on the line. Finally, in the Texans patented Red Carpet End Of Half Zone, he plays another pass at Mike Sims-Walker absolutely perfectly, but drops the interception. That’s a total of 5 well defensed balls out of 6 plays, and he gave up 14 points and dropped an interception out of it. The Football Gods really do have it out for the Texans this year.

-Since I’ve been on the anti-Frank Bush bandwagon all week, I want to give credit where credit is due. The blitz he dialed up for Garrard’s first sack was magnificent. He stacked seven on the line of scrimmage, one of them dropped back in coverage after about a two second initial rush. The young Jacksonville line just completely crumbled. Normally on sacks you give a Blown Block for the person responsible. On this play, there were about three and I had to pick the one MOST responsible. If they had five plays even 75% as successful as this a game, I’d think Bush was a worthy defensive coordinator.

The second sack of this half, sadly, was David Garrard’s fault rather than the Texans. A standard five man blitz, with DeMeco Ryans trailing late after he determined that Maurice Jones-Drew was in to block. Leftwich stumbled back on his own heel off the snap, then seemed to wait forever for his targets to come open. Even after Zach Diles almost broke Jones-Drew’s block, he held onto the ball. Ryans playfully tapped Jones-Drew’s head on the way by, and Jones-Drew was looking vacantly at Garrard as if to say “Still? Really?”

- Filed under reasons you can tell you’re having a bad year: A kicker who was 3-10 from 40+ yards coming into the game nails a 51 yarder and a 46 yarder against you.

- In a total surprise to regular subscribers to my newsletter, John Busing was tremendously bad in the first half. He actually tackled Jones-Drew at one point, which was astonishing because I was positive Jones-Drew had a magnetic field that Busing wasn’t allowed to break. It would’ve been a great half if that was the only thing that Busing did, but just to mix things up, he decided to be responsible for the two biggest Jaguars gains in the half. Just for kicks, he threw in being the second defender on the zone coverage that led to Wilford’s TD catch.

The first big Jaguars gainer, 47 yard pass to Marcedes Lewis, was (hold your breath) zone coverage. In this zone coverage, Busing was responsible as the closer for the hole Lewis got in. He didn’t get there. Then he slipped and fell on his heinie and let Lewis get about 20 more yards.

The second, the 62 yard pass to Zach Miller, was angled away from Cushing in a manner that cried out for safety help, but where was John Busing? On his heinie. After tripping and falling, again. The only reason it wasn’t a touchdown was that Brice McCain was able to beat a block from his own man and catch Miller. We have two NFL tight ends named Zach Miller? I’m rooting for one of them to fail. Nothing personal, I just went through this with shortstops named Alex Gonzalez and have had enough of it.

Finally, I guess it makes more sense that Reeves played back on the goal line when he realized Busing was backing him up. I don’t think I’d have any faith in him either.

Tomorrow…the second half, where we see if I can watch the Chris Brown HB pass without trying to gouge my own eyes out.

- Wish I could say the same for the interior of the line. Kasey Studdard joins Chris Myers as an atrocious pass blocker, while Mike Breisel is adequate at best. Whenever the Jags could isolate Studdard they beat him badly, one play in particular with John Henderson made Studdard look like a steer rider. The Jaguars learned from the Jets and brought many successful up-the-middle blitzes. Steve Slaton was pretty well this half in pass-blocking, particularly out of the shotgun, so he wasn’t to blame for the pressure. The one upside about the blitzes coming up the middle is that Matt Schaub can react and get rid of the ball instead of taking the sack: that is part of the reason the sack numbers are relatively low despite all the pressure.

- Run-wise, I just don’t understand the Texans gameplan. They spend a lot of time going off-tackle or to the guards, but Slaton isn’t a banger and the further away from the middle of the line they can get, the better the runs are going to be. Their center linemen are all proto-type zone blockers. You can say that running off the play action is supremely important to the Texans, but everything about their personnel right now says that you need to run more sweeps and screens. Kyle Shanahan has done a good job in the passing game, but when one of your top five runs of the season is made by Kevin Walter, that’s a sign you need to revamp the strategy.

- Amobi Okoye had the best quarter I’ve seen him play since his rookie year to start the game, then in the second quarter he was invisible again. Although at least that’s more than I can say for the Texans NT, who I have not recorded making a single play through three games no matter who is playing it. Thus my term, “Texans NT”, instead of an actual name. It exists only in theory. Which explains the run defense more throughly.

- I went over Fred Bennett on Battle Red Blog earlier this week, but one other thing I wanted to hit on about this that I didn’t think the piece made clear enough: just because I dig Fred Bennett, I am under no illusions that he is a tackler. And yes, my viewing of the tape pretty much coincided with how I thought he played; if you want some more statistical proof, FO has the Texans as 28th vs #1 WR’s, but 14th vs. #2′s. Perhaps all his mistakes were in the second half, or perhaps I’m not all that wrong. In other safety news, John Busing was the culprit of just about every big running play of the past two weeks. I don’t have a lot to add on the defensive side that other Texans bloggers and I haven’t already gone over: the team overpursues way too much and plays way too close to the line. But if the Texans had a real safety there, they might have held those to 10 yard gains instead of 40 yard gains.

- While the majority of the Texans blitzes I charted in this half were successful plays for the defense, they were still really slow and didn’t get much pressure at all. Garrard had all day to throw, but was undone by flukes (Dunta Robinson successfully defending a pass, Cushing tipping a ball at the line), and overthrows in the first half. You never really got the sense that Garrard was panicked, and I think a lot of that has to do with…

-Eugene Monroe pretty much shut down Mario Williams one-on-one in what probably made the difference in the game. As bad as the Texans defense is, they need Williams to make 4-5 big plays a game to have any prayer in hell of holding a team under 28 points. It’s not like he wasn’t getting pressure in the other games, he had his hurries. Monroe just outplayed him. Surprisingly, the only time the Texans really got pressure on the QB in the first half was with Connor Barwin. Not as much of a surprise: the fact that it came on an overload blitz that the Jags bumbled by sending too many protectors to the other side. I’m not sure what Barwin has to do to get more playing time, but there is no way he is appreciably worse than Antonio Smith as a pass-rusher (although Smith is okay) and if he’s bad at playing the run then it’s not like he’d be alone there on the Texans.

-I was really impressed by Terrance Knighton, who had a couple of pretty good stops in run defense and held up the offensive line at the point of attack for the most part. Unfortunately he was injured late in the half. Also, he plays for the Jaguars. Ah well, it’s fun to dream about good defensive tackles, right?

-Kevin Walter obviously was a big part of the offense and things ran much more smoothly with him back, but another part of the reason he drew so many targets was that the Texans were obviously targeting rookie Derek Cox, who would fit right in with the Texans secondary. Walter was also a huge upgrade in run blocking over Jacoby Jones and Andre Davis, which turned a few Slaton -2 yard runs into 2 yard runs.

I kind of feel like NFL fans are a more roller-coastery sort than others. One week everyone is back on the Texans for playoffs bandwagon after the BESF’s are beaten, the next, the Jaguars come up with a pretty remarkable all things considered. 9 times out of 10, Mario Williams gets a lot more pressure than he did this game. 8 times out of 10, a team scores on ____ & goal from the 1 instead of fumbling. I’m not saying that the Texans are supremely unlucky, or that they deserved to win that game, but merely that a few important things went the Jags way.

My reading of this team right now is starting to slightly decrease, mainly because Frank Bush has been so tremendously bad (and Kubiak so supportive) so far that I have little faith in the defense to figure out it’s real weak points. I came into the season thinking this was an 8 win team, and right now I’m leaning towards it being more of a 6-7 win team. If you want reasons for optimism, there are a few to be had. There is no way this team can maintain the split of how defensively bad it is on third down compared to the other two downs; FO doesn’t release those numbers to the public before book time, but trust me, it’s every bit as bad as it’s looked. They also probably can’t give up two 60+ yard TD runs every week. At some point, that will lead Bush to either get fired or find a safety who knows how to stay in a spot and can tackle. Whether that point is Week 6 or Week 8 or Week 12 could mean a win or two in the standings. Just by simple regression, the defense can’t stay THIS bad.

However, right now they are still really bad. And short-term, my gut feeling is to like the Raiders this week. Anyone who expects more than 3 catches and 40 yards from Andre Johnson against the almighty Asomugha is fighting some deep odds. It’d be one thing if the Texans were able to stack the box and force JaMarcus Russell to beat them, but with this teams track record of stacking the box so far this year I don’t even see how that gets them anywhere. The Raiders are going to rush for at least 150 yards, probably 200. In fact, if I were Tom Cable, I’d even consider just running the option with the big QB. John Busing’s knees would probably buckle on the sidelines just watching it. Walter and Owen Daniels will keep this game close but the Raiders running game is going to eat up too much clock and too many yards. I’d love to be proven wrong though.