Texans Lose Heartbreaker to Buccaneers, 20-19

When Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans fired his good friend Bobby Slowik after the team’s dismal offensive performance in 2024, Texan fans rejoiced. Not only would there be something new, but this showed that Ryans was willing to can a friend, if it meant giving the team a better chance at reaching new heights. After all, this is a franchise that’s never played in a conference title game.

Fast forward to Monday night, Week 2 of the “Nick Caley as OC,” and the excitement of something new is totally gone, as the Texans’ offense spent a Monday night looking a whole lot like last season’s offense in a 20-19 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Texans are now 0-2, and live in the same standing neighborhood as teams like Tennessee Titans, New Orleans Saints, and Chicago Bears,

As always, there were winners and losers in last night’s game. Here we go….

WINNERS

4. Special teams
After a rough Week 1 for Frank Ross’ special teams units, on Monday night they kept the Texans in the game, particularly in the fourth quarter. Jaylin Noel may have found an early home in his career as the Texans’ kick and punt returner, including a 53-yard punt return setting up the final Texans score. Prior to that, a blocked punt set up a Ka’imi Fairbairn 53-yard field goal to make it 14-13. Give a gold star to Coach Ross, great job special teams.

3. Danielle Hunter
One positive constant for the Texans’ defense through these first two games has been the pass rush off the edge. There’s nothing wrong with Will Anderson and Danielle Hunter, both of whom got to Baker Mayfield for a sack. We acknowledge Hunter here because his second quarter sack of Mayfield was the 100th sack of his highly decorated career.

2. Bucky Erving
Okay, now back to our regularly scheduled programming of criticizing the Texans’ defensive line’s and linebackers’ performance. Somehow, they made Bucs running back Bucky Erving look like Eric Dickerson on Monday night. Irving finished with 121 all purpose yards on 23 touches, and seemingly had the Bucs in 2nd and medium, or 2nd and short, all night long. Irving had a huge catch and run, breaking roughly six tackles, on the final drive, and was probably the biggest reason the Bucs had 37 minutes time of possession.

1. Baker Mayfield
Baker Mayfield, in three seasons in Tampa Bay, has gone from one of my least favorite players to one of my favorite players, because he stared his career mortality in the face, having been let go by Cleveland, Carolina, and the Rams. His redemption story in Tampa Bay has been nothing short of remarkable, and now he’s the type of quarterback that C.J. Stroud talks about being. In the final moments of the game on Monday, Mayfield had a huge scramble on 4th and 10 to keep the game winning drive alive, and a nice throw to get Irving into open space for a 22 yard gain. Baker Mayfield plays winning football.

LOSERS

4. Me
I don’t bring my affiliations into this space often. People know I’m a Texans fan, but many don’t know that I am also a proud graduate of the University of Notre Dame. So you can imagine my last 72 hours, where my college team AND my pro team both lose heartbreaking games at home, after taking a late lead on a touchdown (missing the extra point), and then allowing a length of the field touchdown with under ten seconds to go to fall to 0-2. Feel free to cry for me.

3. Dare Ogunbowale
One week after having a catastrophic fumble to lose the Rams game for the Texans, Ogunbowale was a disaster for the few snaps he was on the field on Monday, the big play being a sack he allowed on a third down, in which he was trucked by a blitzing cornerback. Ogunbowale can go ahead and play special teams, but he doesn’t need to be playing snaps on offense anymore.

2. Texans tackling
DeMeco Ryans arrived in Houston touting his “SWARM” mentality almost three years ago, and it all sounded pretty cool. It stands for “Special Work Ethic And Relentless Mindset,” but implies a style of attacking football slathered in hard hits and lots of pain. The problem now is it has devolved into a parade of poor tackling and dumb penalties. On Monday, poor tackling was a huge reason the Bucs had 169 rushing yards on 30 carries.

1. Nick Caley
There’s not much to say, because it’s so blatantly obvious that the Texans have not evolved one bit on the offensive side of the football, and yet I could write 5,000 words about how, two weeks in, we feel duped by all the promises of a “dog” mentality on the offensive line. That group of dogs has played like chihuahuas these first two weeks, allowing constant pressure and opening up virtually nothing in the run game. The most specific failure by Caley so far was his play calling on three straight plays from the Bucs’ one yard line, where he had the Texans in shotgun, and on the final two plays, third and fourth down, he had Stroud throwing low percentage passes to the back corner of the end zone. Caley has been a failure of a hire, so far.

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