The Houston Texans have a challenge on their hands when they face the Tennessee Titans Sunday at 12:00 p.m. CT at Nissan Stadium.
Quarterback Ryan Tannehill has run play-action passes 53 times this season, tied with Matt Ryan for the fourth-most in the NFL. Given that the Titans run such a preponderance of play-action, the Texans defense will have to figure out when Tennessee is passing and when they are running it.
“I actually had a long conversation with [defensive end] J.J. (Watt) just this afternoon about if we can figure out exactly if we can tell when they’re running the boots and when they weren’t,” Texans defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver told reporters Thursday.
According to Weaver, the intricacy of the Titans’ offense is due to offensive coordinator Arthur Smith.
“Honestly, I have to give Arthur Smith and his coaching staff a tremendous amount of credit,” said Weaver. “They do a good job of making everything look the same. You’ve got to play it honest, otherwise that one time you climb for the boot and you guess, you’ve got Derrick Henry cutting it back where you’re supposed to be in that C gap, and he’s running it downhill into your secondary. I think you’ve got to play honest.”
In just four games, Henry has amassed the third-most rushing yards in the league with 376. Of those 376, 205 have come after contact, tied with Todd Gurley for the seventh-most in the NFL.
“They’ve got a very good scheme that’s caused problems for obviously a bunch of different defenses they’ve played at this point,” said Weaver. “We’ve just got to make sure we go out there and play disciplined football, everybody doing their job, playing the plays as we see them, playing honest and try to make the plays happen.”
The Texans will have to do something no one has in four tries: get a win over Tennessee, and for a 1-4 team, that could be a tall order.
