Head coach Lovie Smith was unable to guide the Houston Texans to their second victory of the season against the Cleveland Browns in Week 13, but not all was lost. His team managed to keep the final score within 14 points, and despite their atrocious offensive output, their defense put together an exceptional performance against their former franchise quarterback.
Asked to evaluate the team’s defensive output against a talented, albeit rusty, quarterback on the other side of the ball, Smith pointed reporters to the second half of the Texans’ last game against the Miami Dolphins.
“I think we’re healthy right now, for one thing defensively,” Smith explained. “I’m going to go back to the second half of the Miami game. We shut them out the second half, so defensively, we see it coming. Guys were playing hard, start to finish right up until, gave us a chance. We’re doing what the defense says do. It says a lot in a game like that, giving us a chance to stay in the game, but we’ve got to have some more on the other side.”
If Houston can manage to get both sides of the ball to play well at the same time they may actually have a chance to start stacking up wins before their season draws to a merciful close. They held their former quarterback to under 150 yards passing and managed to pick him off, all without allowing a single touchdown through the air.
For now, this moral victory will be the best that the team could hope for against a Browns squad that is much more capable than their 5-7 record would otherwise indicate. They’ll need to take whatever momentum they can into their Week 14 matchup against the burgeoning Dallas Cowboys in the hopes of surprising their intrastate opponent with competent performances on both sides of the field.