Bill O’Brien: Stop the run to halt the play-action
It’s no secret that the Titans love their play-action. The NFL’s No. 1-ranked play-action offense, Tennesee is playing on beating up the Texans’ defense on Sunday with it; not a bold strategy, considering the Denver Broncos tried and succeeded doing the same thing last week.
Their quarterback, Ryan Tannehill, is thriving as a play-action passer. 810 of Tannehill’s passing yards come on play-action, per Pro Football Reference. According to PlayerProfiler, he leads the NFL in play-action completion rate (75.8%).
However, the Texans will start to defend the play-action with the run. If they can stop Derrick Henry, then they will have an easier job keying-in on the pass.
“I think number one is you’ve got to stop the run. If you’re not stopping the run then it can hurt you,” O’Brien said. “Even if you are stopping the run, if it’s a good ball fake and you step up and you don’t get back quite fast enough or you take your eyes off your man in man coverage, you’ve got a problem. So, I think it’s just working it in practice and just continuing to try to make sure we’re teaching it the right way. How we want to react, whether it’s zone or man and then making sure our players actually do it in practice. I think doing it on the practice field is a big deal.”
Henry, who has rushed for 1,243 yards and 13 touchdowns on five yards per carry, will force the Texans defense to play-big. He is 12th highest in the NFL runs against a stacked box rate (23.2%), per Player Profiler.