You know things didn’t go so well for you when every single person who was involved in defeating you got a game ball. That’s what happened to the Pittsburgh Steelers yesterday in Texas. While it wasn’t their first win of the season, it was certainly the best for the Houston Texans under first-year head coach DeMeco Ryans, a 30-6 blowout. And it got him feeling mighty generous.
“This is what I envisioned Texans football looked like”, he said in his postgame speech to his team, via the team’s Twitter account. “It’s dominating up front, running the ball how we want to run the ball, d-line attacking, dominating the line of scrimmage, swarming defense, explosive offense, and everybody excited about playing football”.
It sure sounds good on paper. For that matter, it looked good on the field. There wasn’t a phase in which the Steelers weren’t soundly beaten, including coaching and schematics. That tends to be the case when your opponent scores more than four times as many points as you, though.
“And that’s just the start”, Ryans continued. “Keep grinding, love you guys. Awesome win. Hey, let’s get a game ball for everybody!”.
Now, let’s make one thing clear. This is more about the Texans than it is about the Steelers. Houston is coming out of a horrible run that included the blowback of the horrendous Deshaun Watson scandal, in which they were embroiled. They’re trying to make a fresh start.
They’ve got an exciting young quarterback now in C.J. Stroud who is looking like the real deal through his first four games, now leading back-to-back 30-plus-point performances. He’s thrown for over 1,200 yards without an interception in that span, with six touchdown passes.
Although the run game was not explosive, it was effective when it needed to be most, particularly early in the game. WR Nico Collins dominated his matchups, going off for 168 yards. They even ran a gadget play for a touchdown.
And the defense was impressive as well, limiting Pittsburgh to a net 225 yards and seven points despite trailing pretty much all game. The Steelers did okay on third down, but stalled twice in the red zone. The run game showed brief signs of life, but largely, too little, too late.
Ryans, in case you weren’t aware, played six of his 10 seasons as a Houston Texan, a two-time Pro Bowler for them and a Defensive Rookie of the Year. This is his first year back after being under Kyle Shanahan on his coaching staff in San Francisco since 2017. This is very important to him.
And this win over Pittsburgh provided the blueprint for what he wants the team to look like. So everybody gets a game ball for achieving the ideal. It’s like the proof of concept that they can build something special coming out of a few horrible years for the franchise. It’s respectful and respectable, from that respect. But you never want to be the team on the other end of such a tribute.
