Everything was going right for the Houston Texans against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday night. They held a 13-0 more than midway through the second quarter in an attempt to move above .500 on the season.
And then everything seemed to go wrong for first-year head coach Bill O’Brien’s team.
Pittsburgh scored 24 points in the final four minutes of the second quarter to take a double-digit lead into the half. Any time a team puts up that many points in a short amount of time, the opposing team had to make some major mistakes. A fumble and an interception led to two of these touchdowns, both within the last two minutes of the half.
At the end of the night, Houston fell 30-23 and dropped to under .500 for the first time all season. After the game, O’Brien didn’t really seem to be in a talking mood with the media.
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That response was in relation to a question about positives that could be taken out of the game.
Outside of that one short sound clip, O’Brien had the following to say about the game and his team’s overall performance (via NFL.com).
It was 30-23, you know. It wasn’t 50-0,” he said. “The thing is, you can’t do that. You can’t turn the ball over. You can’t field a kick, bobble the kick. Can’t give up shot plays. You can’t have 12 men on the field on third down to give them a first down. We just can’t do those things, and with all that being said, we’re one onside kick away and these questions are like we lost 50-0. We lost by a touchdown. With all of that stuff that we did, we have to improve it. We gotta coach it better and we gotta play better.
It’s very frustrating when you turn the ball over on your own 2-yard line. The whole thing’s frustrating. Players are frustrated, coaches are frustrated, but again, it’s not like, again, we’re an onside kick away, which, we almost recovered. Almost only counts in horseshoes, but we’re an onside kick away from having a chance to tie the game with all of that being said that we did wrong. It’s a good football team, give Pittsburgh a lot of credit. They played better and they also coached better than us.
Considering that O’Brien took over a two-win Texans team that finished last season on a 14-game losing streak, he has done a pretty good job thus far in his first season. But losses like this will continue to plague Houston until it gets a viable quarterback.
Now at 3-4 on the season and losers of three in a row, Houston has a decision to make moving forward this season. Does it continue to throw Ryan Fitzpatrick out there or will Ryan Mallett be given a shot? That’s the question that should be asked.
Photo: USA Today