A punishing New York rushing attack and an injured Arian Foster left the Houston Texans exposed on both sides of the ball in Sunday’s 30-17 loss to the Giants in East Rutherford. Rashad Jennings gutted the Texans’ defense for 176 yards on 34 carries, while Eli Manning once again looked like a 2-time Super Bowl champion, completing 21 of 28 passes for 234 yards and two touchdowns. Meanwhile the Texans offense was out of sorts for most of the afternoon, with Ryan Fitzpatrick throwing three costly interceptions and finishing with a quarterback rating of 59.6.
“We’re not going to win any games when I play like that,” Fitzpatrick said after the game. “Sometimes interceptions happen and all that, but it was just poor, poor play by me.”
The Texans were forced to rely on Fitzpatrick much more than they had in the previous two contests due to Foster’s absence, as the league’s second-leading rusher missed the game with a hamstring injury. The Houston media had already begun to question Foster’s heavy workload earlier this week, as his 55 carries through the first two games were far and away the most in the league. Whatever the reason for his being unable to play, Houston looked lost without him, as they managed a paltry 83 total yards in the first half.
It looked as though the Texans’ defense might save the day by limiting their opponents’ scoring despite giving up huge chunks of yards, just as they had done against Washington and Oakland. Houston recovered a Larry Donnel fumble inside its own 5-yard line in the first quarter and dodged another bullet in the second, when New York fumbled the snap on what would have been a 30-yard field goal attempt.
But things began to unravel when Danieal Manning took a terrible angle on a quick slant to Victor Cruz, leading to a 26-yard touchdown and a 7-0 Giants lead. Fitzpatrick followed with an interception that led to a Jennings touchdown and a 14-0 halftime deficit for the Texans.
After an early second half field goal stretched the lead to 17-0, the Texans’ offense finally started to click. Houston drove inside the Giants’ 10-yard line before settling for a Randy Bullock field goal, then scored on a 44-yard touchdown pass from Fitzpatrick to Damaris Johnson to cut the lead to 17-10 at the end of the third quarter. But New York finally put the game out of reach in the fourth, scoring on each of their first three possessions, including a touchdown that followed a blocked punt deep in Texans’ territory.
Everything that had worked well for the Texans the previous two weeks fell to pieces on Sunday. Fitzpatrick’s three interceptions were his first of the season, and he was sacked twice after being kept clean each of the first two games. The offensive line struggled in run blocking as well. Houston gained 119 yards on the ground, but 46 of those came on one play from rookie Alfred Blue. The defense gave up big yards again (419 total), failed to generate much of a pass rush (only one sack), and couldn’t force any turnovers from the normally interception-happy Eli Manning.
All in all, Sunday was the exact opposite of the formula that had worked so well for the Texans the previous two weeks, a point that was not lost on either Fitzpatrick or head coach Bill O’Brien.
“You saw in the first two games the formula of not turning the ball over and forcing turnovers on defense and what that led to, which was two wins,” Fitzpatrick said. O’Brien echoed that sentiment, saying that “any time you turn the ball over three times, commit penalties, and can’t stop the run, that’s not a formula for success.”
It’s safe to say that whatever ingredients go into that “formula” for success that the Texans were referencing, few (if any) of them were on display on Sunday.
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