The Houston Texans were considered one of those teams poised for a breakout season in the NFL. However, things haven’t gone according to plan—at least in terms of results. DeMeco Ryans’ squad has struggled to find its footing and on Monday, with CJ Stroud under center, it suffered its second straight loss, this time to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
They say winning breeds more winning — and losing can do the same. That’s exactly the trap the Texans must avoid. The NFL season always offers a shot at redemption, but there’s little room left for error if Houston wants to take control of the division once again.
Following the narrow one-point loss to the Bucs at NRG Stadium, it was Stroud himself who spoke to the media and expressed his desire to have a serious, closed-door conversation with his teammates in order to quickly turn things around.
“As a team, we’ve just got to stay together,” the QB said during his press conference. “Everybody’s going to talk crazy — ‘we suck, we this, we that.’ At the end of the day, we’ve got to stay together and mesh well. Be honest and have hard conversations. I think right now we need more confidence, at least on offense, confidently playing better together. I think that’s a big thing.”
C.J. Stroud #7 of the Houston Texans.
Sunday’s loss to Tampa Bay marked the second straight defeat for DeMeco Ryans’ team, as the Texans also dropped their season opener at SoFi Stadium against the Rams.
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Learning from mistakes
While the first two games of the season have ended in tough losses for Houston, the road ahead is still long. Breaking the losing streak next week will be crucial, and doing so will require the team to learn—above all—from what not to do moving forward in order to achieve better results.
“It’s a long season. It’s week two,” Stroud said. “Hopefully, we learned our lessons and learned to put teams away and learn to put points on the board. We can say a bunch of different things and what could have went right, but at the end of the day, it’s about winning games. And those last plays that are in between those are the games, those are the plays that you end up winning or losing on.”
AFC South in jeopardy
The Texans’ tough start to the season comes with an added challenge: surprisingly to many, the Indianapolis Colts are off to a 2-0 start, standing as the sole leaders of the AFC South. If Ryans can’t get the team back on track soon, his dynasty in the division could be in serious jeopardy by year’s end.
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