The Houston Texans hit harder and brought a different swagger to Nissan Stadium Sunday when they beat the Tennessee Titans 24-21 to take a one-game lead in the AFC South.
In the week leading up to the divisional tilt, the Texans practiced in pads, and safety Justin Reid believes it was one of the factors in helping Houston set the tone.
“Yeah, it set a tone because we knew this was going to be a physical game,” Reid told reporters. “We are both down-hill run teams and very physical on both sides of the ball. That’s how the AFC South is. It’s going to be a hard-nosed football game. We knew that the tougher and more physical team would come out on top.”
The Titans featured smash-mouth running back Derrick Henry, who added 86 yards on 21 carries. Houston’s ground game was led by running back Carlos Hyde, who broke the 1,000-yard mark for the first time in his career with a 26-carry, 104-yard effort that also produced a touchdown.
If setting the tone was as simple as practicing in pads for all three days leading up to game day, then why don’t the Texans do it all the time?
According to the collective bargaining agreement ratified in 2011 between the NFL and the NFLPA, clubs are limited to 14 padded practices during the regular season, 11 of which have to be conducted within the first 11 weeks of the season with three of them remaining during the last six weeks. On top of that, teams can only have two padded practices in the same week just once the whole season.
In the playoffs, and the Texans are slated to make the playoffs, Houston would get to have one padded practice per each week they were in the postseason.
There is a tight window for NFL teams to use their padded practices, and the Texans chose wisely as they used one to gear up for a tough matchup in Tennessee.
