As he should.

Absent the last two minutes of the second quarter, which contained events that are highly infrequent and improbable, this team performed better than just about anyone expected.

In other words, in terms of the parts of the game that stand to occur on a regular basis, there was nothing about that game to suggest this is a terrible team.

 

I hypothesize that over time a congruence will emerge between Philbin being optimistic and being employed.

 

Yeah,just take away all the bad stuff and they played good. That is flawed logic.

 

yeah I honestly felt the texans didn't want to run the score up on us and didn't try much in the 2nd half

 

And yours is simplistic logic... he wasn't saying that at all.

 

So long as he sees what is wrong and makes proper adjustments we will be fine. That is the true value of a head coach. As opposed to Sparano who repeatedly encountered the same problems and repeatedly tried the same solutions that didn't work.

 

Exactly why they didn't want to score in the 1st quarter

 

Only solution: work harder with same approach.

 

Right away he is asked to comment on the tipped passes. This is my interpretation.

1. When he says "especially in the three step game" you need to pay attention to that. He's admitting the nature of the passing offense itself puts us behind the 8-ball in order to try and prevent tipped passes.

2. He mentions that the OL have to do a better job engaging at the line of scrimmage, though he admits that can get difficult according to where the defenders are lining up. See the above. He's essentially admitting both that the lineman have to do a better job at this, while also admitting there's only so much they can do given the three step game they're running.

3. He admits that Tannehill has to do a better job with his eyes, but also says that Tannehill needs to "hold his back foot" and wait until he gets the right throwing lane. This is probably the main culprit, based on how Philbin framed it, given the kind of offense they're intent on running.

4. Also said something curious about receivers needing to "protect the pass" better. Seemed like he was alluding to Legedu Naanee's interception. He expects Naanee to knock the ball down and/or get his body in front of it better.

 

Also pointed to Tannehill's responsibility again when he said maybe his inexperience, being in the first game, made him want to focus a little harder sometimes on making the right decision which leads you to looking at your target a little more than usual.

 

They had the ball twice in the 1st and missed a fg I don't see your point the game was over in the 3rd quarter they didn't try at all in the 4th on offense.

 

I like that he commented that there were a couple of plays with mirrored concepts where he has the ability to decide which side to work with pre-snap and maybe Ryan decided to work one side where in hindsight he should've worked the other.

 

Four giveaways troubled Philbin the most. Specified how Legedu Naanee had a great block on Marcus Thigpen's touchdown return.

One thing about Naanee is he was only out there on 12 of the pass plays. Anthony Armstrong was out there for 27 of the pass plays and he put up almost a goose egg, 1 catch for 3 yards.

I'm not trying to dig on Armstrong but if the thesis by the General Manager was that we're going to grab a guy from another team and another system and he's going to make a major impact with us by the very next week...that thesis was a poor one. There's some translatability with Shanahan's WCO and Philbin's but that doesn't mean he'll be ready to contribute right away.

 

Actually if what you're trying to get a read on is how this team is likely to play over the long haul (i.e., whether to be optimistic about the team), and the bad things they did stand to happen very rarely if ever over the long haul, then the logic isn't flawed.

 

you can read it as when **** hit the fan we fell apart like a cheap suit and it snowballed into instant game over

 

And I don't think there is a single team that wouldn't have responded similarly, now matter how good they are.

Turnovers are very strongly correlated with winning for a reason.

 

How do you not see his point? The best they could do with two drives on our starting d was A 52yd field goal. Despite having schaub, Johnson, foster and Daniels? I'm pretty sure they got the ball in the 2nd qtr and still continued to do nothing against us until we started coughing it up in our own territory. We even held them to a field goal after tannys first pick that got returned to our redzone!

We were giving the texans all they could handle before the turnovers and every Texan fan knows it. I assure you texans fans who saw the game are saying "thank god for those ridiculous turnovers cause things werent going too Well"

The turnovers were very bad and it killed us, but this starting d showed me something up until that point.

 

And Texans fans probably don't have any preconceived notions of how bad this team is coloring their perceptions of the game. They don't have hopelessness and pessimism making them interpret lots of what this team does as more negative than it really is.

 

That pretty much corresponds with my assessment of the tips at the line that I posted this morning. I stated that what the OL could do was very limited and that the fix was to mix up the play calling and for RT to learn to use the passing lanes.

Short of cut blocking, there isn't much an OL can do to keep the DL's hands down. They can if the DL is just keeping their hands up all the time, but when they're just timing a three step drop, the OL can't stop it. I also don't agree with Fouts that it has to do with RT staring at the WR. That could matter on deeper drops but on a three step drop there simply isn't much stare time. IMO there are two things that can correct the issue. One is on the coaching staff to vary the drops more. It feels like our offense is a little too quick pass oriented and therefore predictable. The other is on RT to adapt by using his passing lanes. I don't agree that he looked small in the pocket. I would say it's the opposite. He's gotten by not using the passing lanes b/c he's tall and has a high enough delivery that he's always just thrown the ball over the D-line. Even though he had a relatively higher percentage of passes batted down in college than other QBs, it was still a small percentage. It was something that happened maybe once per game. Marino faced a similar thing after his first season. Defense couldn't sack him so they went to bat the ball down strategy. The coaches all said the same OL help keep the DL's hands down rhetoric (IMO it's to deflect blame off the QB), but what worked for Dan was simply learning to use his passing lanes.

IMO the fact that it had such a huge impact on this game will cause him/them to focus on something they probably considered a minor problem before. I expect that RT is well suited to solve the problem as he showed the ability to pass the ball at a different angle when he found a defender in his face. I think it's mostly a vision thing. He probably has trained himself to mostly ignore the DL and focus downfield as long as he can. While a guy like Russell Wilson had to learn to account for the DL. I don't expect it will be that difficult for RT to adjust.

 

Did we score offensive touchdowns outside of those two minutes?