Houston Texans: Ryan Mallett On The Rise?

I love my Houston Texans and I know you do too.

One win, one game, that’s all it took!

Sure it was against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers suspect defense but with as much parity the NFL has these days, every opponent must be taken seriously.

Because with all honesty, any team can win on any given Sunday.

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I know that cliche has been used time and again but it rings true.

The Bucs hung around for quite some time right until it was too late for them to make a strike.

If you cancel out the blundering kicks that both Randy Bullock and rookie Kyle Brindza — both combined for four missed field goals and two extra point attempts — then this game would’ve been a lot closer down the stretch.

But the Texans did play well enough to keep the Bucs at bay and even though they were down by one point briefly — I still had that feeling that they were going to win the football game.

I don’t always feel that way with the Texans depending on the opponents we face despite the fact that we may be hanging in there.

I had that bad feeling against the Kansas City Chiefs and the same for against the Carolina Panthers.

There just a lot of things that they were doing better than us.

But let’s talk about the guy that was key to the Texans’ success.

Yes, our signal-caller in Ryan Mallett!

Yes, he wasn’t perfect but was smoking Sunday going 24-for-39 for 228 yards with one touchdown and one pick to his credit for a 75.6 rating.

He seemed to have a better rapport with the receivers and knew when to hand-off the ball to Alfred Blue who had the best game of his season — perhaps his short career so far — with 139 yards rushing off 31 carries and one touchdown.

Things were clicking and I was happy to see it.

In fact, Pro Football Focus gave Mallett the highest grade of his career (+1.1) which is a stark contrast from his performance against the Panthers (-7.2).

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He finally figuring this out and he may be well on his way to status of cementing his status as the presumptive starter for now.

And quite honestly, who else do we have out there?

I’ll let you think about that one as things silent.

PFF notes that the reason why Mallett was so successful was his effective use of the play-action which continued to throw the Buc’s defenses off.

They mention that his completion percentage is 26.9 percent better when utilizing the play-action fake this season, Bill O’Brien has gone from just 9.5 percent of the snaps in the first two games to 20 percent play-action last week.

If it works for Mallett and this team, then it definitely works for me!

Lest we not forget that Matt Schaub made a living — a healthy one I might add — with heavy-use of the play action.

It’s great for tall quarterbacks like Mallett and Schaub who can’t run all that well to make things happen but have enough football IQ to know how to keep the chains moving.