Value of Things: Texans vs. Bears by the numbers

A wise coach once said that we should not ignore in victory what you would not ignore in defeat. Until the Houston Texans win the last game on the NFL calendar, we will always look at every game critically. The coaches wouldn’t do anything different. There are always areas to improve on no matter how impressive a victory might look.

Additionally, we do this feature every week because we will begin to notice patterns. Winning teams do certain things and losing teams do certain things. When you discover those things then you can prioritize the winning things and win some of those close, coin flip games. I’m not sure if last night qualifies, but we will get into that after we take a look at the numbers from last night’s win against the Chicago Bears.

Total Yards: Texans 61/310, Bears 66/205
Rushing Yards: Texans 22/75, Bears 22/71
Passing Yards: Texans 39/235, Bears 44/134
Sacks: Texans 7, Bears 3
Turnovers: Texans 1, Bears 2
Penalties: Texans 12/115, Bears 9/60
Time of Possession: Texans 28:47, Bears 31:13

Obviously, the biggest differences in the Texans favor was the one additional turnover and the seven sacks versus three. We will get to that in a minute. Clearly, this was a defensive battle and an ugly football game for those that like offensive fireworks. There is plenty to get into on all sides.

One of my favorite stats from a few seasons ago was how teams facing the San Francisco 49ers were winless in the weeks after they played them. I think that was either 2021 or 2022. Watching a DeMeco Ryans defense helps explain why. They didn’t just beat the Bears offense. They punished them and you have to imagine the soreness will linger for at least a few of those Bears players beyond this week’s practice sessions.

It has been a long time since I could honestly say that the Houston Texans defense won a football game. Last season there were a ton of games where both the offense and the defense contributed. There were certainly games where the defense played good enough to win. Yet, they held the Bears to three points after the first half and beyond the one field goal drive were never really threatened. There were too many great plays to give out game balls, so the entire unit gets one.

Coming into the game I knew the Bears defense was going to be good enough to shut down specific players. In this one, Tank Dell was virtually taken out of the game. I might have figured on Nico Collins, but the Bears obviously prioritized Dell and Stefon Diggs to a lesser extent. I couldn’t have predicted that they would completely shut down the running game.

Dell had 25 yards on two wide receiver carries. Almost all of those came on the first one. So, your Texans running backs gained 51 yards on 19 carries. That’s just not good enough and one of the things we pointed to before the season that puts pressure on the offense and C.J. Stroud specifically. Add that to the few sacks they did give up and there are some issues to clean up from the offensive line.

In the baseball world there is something we would call the “Pythagorean method.” Essentially you take runs scored and runs allowed and spit out a predicted record. We could do something similar above with all of the numbers. Those numbers point to what should have been an easy Texans win. Turnovers are a part of the game. A quarterback gets blindsided. A pass gets tipped. A quarterback makes a bad throw in duress. These things all happen in a football game. When you are up nine and just need to put the game on ice you must at least get a field goal out of that. The Cam Akers fumble wasn’t even a situation of a defender making a great play. Akers was just careless with the football.

As aggressive as the Texans defense was and as generally laudable that is, there were key moments where they just needed to be smarter. Twelve penalties and 115 yards is a ridiculous sum. You had your standard Laremy Tunsil false start penalty(ies). You had a roughing the passer and key pass interference penalties. These were all legitimate penalties and they either killed your own drives or extended their drives. DeMeco Ryans has long emphasized the need to be aggressive and smart at the same time. I am confident he will emphasize that point this week. This could be another game where the Texans could win easily, but it also a game where careless errors could cost them the football game.