The Houston Texans may have lost 42-36 in overtime to the Tennessee Titans to go to 1-5 on the season, but they did earn a decent grade from the AFC South encounter.
According to John Breech from CBS Sports, the Texans earned a B- grade from their loss to the Titans.
Deshaun Watson played out of his mind in this game with 335 yards and four touchdown passes, but that wasn’t good enough to win, because he was let down by a Texans defense that surrendered a franchise-record 601 yards. The performance marked just the second time since 2017 that an NFL team has given up at least 600 yards in a game. The ugly showing by the defense overshadowed the brilliant game by Watson, who led two touchdown drives over the final nine minutes of regulation. Thanks to those two touchdowns, it appeared like it was going to be enough to give Houston the win, but then the defense fell apart. The Texans didn’t win because their defense gave up a 76-yard game-tying drive at the end of the fourth quarter and an 82-yard game-winning touchdown drive to start overtime.
As great as the offense was for Houston, the defense was inconsistent. Where the Texans were able to procure takeaways, they were also struggling to make tackles. The Titans even converted six of their 10 third downs. With an abundance on splash plays from Tennessee, it added up to over 600 yards of total offense for the Titans. It all mitigated Watson’s performance.
“It is tough when you are not able to take advantage of a performance like that, and that’s the thing that we wanted to do,” interim coach Romeo Crennel said. “We thought we had a chance to do, but we didn’t do.
“So, we got to go back and hopefully he can have more performances like that and then defensively we can do a better job to help him out.”
