Houston Texans At Tennessee Titans: Week 17: Takeaways

The Houston Texans have mysteriously ended the season with a 9-7 record and are still awaiting their yet to be determined opponent in the AFC Wild Card round next weekend.

Bill O’Brien did mention that he wanted to play to win this week but those thoughts started going out the window as a bizarre set of events started to unfold.

But before we get to that, let’s start out with the beginning of the game.

With a couple of three-and-outs to start, the Tennessee Titans started to get extremely physical with the Houston Texans as if they were playing to win.

It got so physical that Tom Savage got sacked by Sean Spence on the Houston Texans’ seven-yard causing him to have the ball stripped away by defensive end DaQuan Jones to run in for the touchdown.

It was a totally unacceptable play to happen and it was because teams continue to try to make things happen off the right side of our offensive line, which comprises of Jeff Allen and Chris Clark.

Although there’s no question these guys have effort in what they do, they have consistently shown that they cannot hold back stronger defensive lines, allowing their guys to punch through and get to the quarterback.

After that debacle, the Texans trailed the Titans 7-0.

At the beginning of the 2nd quarter, on a 4th-and-1, Bil O’Brien elected to go for it with Savage running in for the extra yard.

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He was successful in getting the yard but was at the bottom of a huge pile of defensive linemen and it took while for him to get up.

Although he did get up on his own power just fine, he had the Houston Texans training staff evaluate his condition by going to the locker room but eventually returning to the sideline before the end of the half.

As I expected, Brock Osweiler was back under center for the Texans, playing with a sense of passion and urgency to try to help this team get a win.

He did get the Texans within field-goal range with 4:27 left in the half but Nick Novak‘s field goal banged wide right, continuing to make the Texans scoreless thus far.

And in the middle of all of that, Quintin Demps nabbed his 6th pick of the season off Cassel putting him in 2nd place — at least for now — behind Casey Hayward.

Then with 2:31 left in the half, Matt Cassel got the Titans in the red zone for the touchdown after a seven-play, 36-yard drive to Rishard Matthews for the touchdown.

This now put the Titans up 14-0.

At the start of the 2nd half, the Texans came out firing, by picking up the pace with Osweiler getting the Texans in scoring position with a 13-play, 81-yard drive.

He hit C.J. Fiedorowicz off a four-yard pass with Novak’s kick being good, allowing for the Texans get on the board to trail 14-7.