Texans’ run game, Joe Mixon stonewalled, battle in the trenches lost: ‘Everybody has to look in the mirror’

HOUSTON – Inside the Texans’ tomb of a locker room, it was a somber atmosphere late Sunday afternoon.

Players reflected on the state of the team with raw emotions about just how troubling their performance was collectively during an ugly loss to a Titans football team that had won just two games prior to this matchup.

Nowhere were the problems more glaring than where most games are decided: in the trenches, at the line of scrimmage.

The Texans’ sometimes formidable running game was completely stonewalled by the Titans’ stout defensive line headlined by heavyweight defensive tackles Jeffery Simmons and T’Vondre Sweat as they controlled the action in roughneck fashion by shoving around blockers and leaving no room for Pro Bowl running back Joe Mixon to operate.

Mixon rushed for a season-low 22 yards on 14 carries, an average of 1.6 yards per run, and a long run of eight yards with no touchdowns. Mixon had hit the century mark for rushing yardage in six of his eight previous games and was coming off a three-touchdown game against the Dallas Cowboys.

The Texans have reached a crossroads in their season at 7-5 after a mistake-filled 32-27 defeat to the Titans. Although the Texans are 7-5 and in first place in the AFC South division, they aren’t playing well in key areas on both sides of the football. A talented team that entered the season with Super Bowl ambitions doesn’t look like much of a playoff contender, even if they do win the division and earn an automatic berth to the postseason.

“The energy wasn’t there,” right tackle Tytus Howard said. “Those guys brought it to us. We didn’t respond well. We’ve just got to find ways to treat every opponent the same. As a team, we’ve got to flush it, watch the film and see what we can learn from it and think about the rest of the season and decide what type of team we want to be and where we want to go. It’s definitely frustrating because we all set goals at the beginning of the season. We know what type of players we have on this team, so we just got to go out there and play our brand of football. Today, we were complacent. It’s the NFL.

“Every team, no matter what their record is, they have great football players on every team. We’ve got to make a decision on who we want to be the rest of the season. We can’t keep winning one week, then lose the next. It’s not good football. It’s getting to the end of the year now, close to the playoffs. We’ve got to figure out what kind of team we want to be now and not wait too late to be fighting for the division the way we were last year. We need to go ahead and do like coach said, look in the mirror and how can we make each other better.”

How Texans have taken on star running back Joe Mixon’s personality: ‘The energy he brings, everybody respects that’

Football is a game of physicality. It’s a game of emotion. And it’s a game of details and execution. The Texans fell short in all of those key areas.

They were flat and listless after a fast start following an 80-yard kickoff return by running back Dameon Pierce to start the game followed by quarterback C.J. Stroud tossing a 19-yard touchdown pass to former Ohio State teammate Cade Stover, a rookie tight end.

In the fourth quarter when the game was being decided, Stroud was sacked four times. He was sacked in the end zone for a safety by edge Harold Landry to put the game away for good on the heels of a potential go-ahead touchdown pass to wide receiver Nico Collins called back for an illegal shift on Tank Dell and Collins followed by kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn missing a routine 28-yard field goal that would have tied the game.

To not be able to free up Mixon, a gifted 6-foot-1, 220-pound runner who combines speed, power and moves, left the Texans collectively shaking their heads.

They didn’t match the Titans’ aggressiveness and strength against a formidable defensive line.

“I don’t think that was us out there,” left guard Juice Scruggs said. “We know they’ve got a good front, but that’s no excuse. You’re going to face good fronts every week, so we’ve just got to run the ball. It’s frustrating, for sure. We’ve got to figure it out and we will. At the end of the day, 11 on the field, we’re a team. The team can’t point a finger at one person. We’ve just got to get better. We’ve got to get it right.”

And the Texans didn’t stop the run. Titans running back Tony Pollard busted through gaping holes in the Texans’ defense, beating them to the punch for 119 rushing yards and a touchdown on 24 carries as he averaged five yards per run.

“We didn’t do anything well enough for us to win this game,” Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said. “Too many negative plays. Definitely, it was unexplainable. We just didn’t play good. The concern for me is we need to play complementary football, right. We play complementary football, we win games. We don’t, we’re not relying on one side to carry the entire time.

“So whatever happens, like our offense gave us enough points to win the game so that starts with the defense. Didn’t do enough to stop them. We didn’t stop the run, and we didn’t run the ball well, and we gave up way too many points on defense. Our offense did plenty. They gave us enough points. On defense, we have to be able to stop them. Everything that could go wrong, it went wrong.”

Simmons is one of the most aggressive and active defensive linemen in the league, an extremely difficult blocking assignment.

Sweat is a massive former Texas Longhorns standout from Huntsville and one of the biggest and strongest defensive tackles in the NFL at 6-foot-4, 366 pounds.

“Again, it starts with their defensive line,” Ryans said. “They’re a really good front. Really good front. We knew that going into the game. But it doesn’t matter. Every front is good. You have to own the line of scrimmage. You have to be able to control the line of scrimmage and run the ball. We didn’t. We had too many negative plays in the running game. Defensively, we didn’t set the edge well, and the ball got outside a ton, and we didn’t tackle well. All of those mistakes are the making for a pretty bad run defense.”

The Texans rushed for just 46 yards on 17 carries, a 2.4 average. Mixon was completely bottled up. It’s not as if he somehow forgot how to run the football. He’s an outstanding back who entered the game with 10 touchdown runs.

“We didn’t run the ball good enough today,” Howard said. “We’re going to take part of the blame for that. We all have to take pride in that, in getting Joe the best look possible running the ball. We didn’t run the ball well enough. The same little mistakes, they come back to bite us in the (butt). We got to be better. The game is won upfront. They ran the ball well as a team. We didn’t run the ball well as a team. That’s the difference in the game right there. We got to be better.”

Before heading home, right guard Shaq Mason acknowledged the seriousness of the situation. If the Texans don’t improve, their season hangs in the balance. There are more difficult games ahead in December against the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens, who beat them in the playoffs in an AFC divisional round game last season.

“We can’t be up-and-down,” Mason said. “We can’t ride a rollercoaster. Honestly, it’s all us. It’s nut-cutting time.”

And the message from Ryans was succinct after the game and echoed by the players, including linebacker and team captain Azeez Al-Shaair: “Everybody has to look in the mirror.”

Aaron Wilson is a Texans and NFL reporter for KPRC 2 and click2houston.com