The Houston Texans beat themselves as much as the Indianapolis Colts dominated them Sunday afternoon at Lucas Oil Stadium.
In the 30-23 loss, the Texans also committed 10 penalties for 54 yards. Both the offense and the defense were at fault, and their leaders on each side of the ball took responsibility for the mess.
For cornerback Johnathan Joseph, the key to preventing a penalty-laden performance that kills their chances for victory is to keep practicing.
“Just go back to practice,” Joseph said. “Some of them are day-one things that you go over the very first day. You install things but it’s a lot of pre-snap penalties and things you can’t go back and change. Obviously, it’s good that you can learn from it, but now is the time to go and take it full head-on.”
For the defense, the most egregious example was on the Colts’ second drive of the third quarter, a 75-yard touchdown drive that saw two third downs with Texans penalties that kept the Colts drive alive. Receiver Zach Paschal caught a 3-yard touchdown and put the Texans further into a hole 28-16 with 1:22 in the third quarter.
“We can’t get off the field so we can’t do that first of all,” outside linebacker Whitney Mercilus said. “So we’ve just got to look ourselves in the mirror, go back through the film, see what we could have done better and move forward.”
The offense’s first drive of the game saw them set to go for it on fourth-and-1, but an illegal formation with newcomer, offensive tackle Dan Skipper, failing to report turned the situation into a fourth-and-6, subsequently forcing Houston to punt.
“It really hurts,” said quarterback Deshaun Watson. “It kind of sets you back. So we just have to sharpen that up a little bit, learn from it and next time in that situation make sure we’re ready and locked in.”
The Texans are 4-3, second in the AFC South, and don’t have the tiebreaker over the Colts. However, there are nine games left and plenty of time to get things corrected.
