One of the great aspects of the NFL is the weekly routine the entire 16-game slate affords. Sundays are game days, Mondays are recaps of what happened, Wednesdays through Fridays are practice days — rinse and repeat.
It’s a big crunch when a club goes from a Sunday game to a Thursday night matchup, and that is right where the Houston Texans are as they gear up for a rematch with the Indianapolis Colts at NRG Stadium.
According to coach Bill O’Brien, Monday is “Thursday” relative to the preparations for the Colts as he explained to reporters how the team is preparing for Indianapolis after a 41-7 loss to the Baltimore Ravens Sunday afternoon at M&T Bank Stadium.
“When you get back here last night you’ve already watched the tape on the plane,” O’Brien said. “You have an idea of how the game was played and what we need to do to correct some things and what may carry over to this game.
“So, you get right to work on that because there’s an urgency, there’s a game Thursday night. Basically this is Thursday of a game week. We’ve got to get going.”
The Texans and Colts are each 6-4 on the season, tied for first place in the AFC South, with Indianapolis having won the Week 7 matchup 30-23 to achieve the first part of a head-to-head tiebreaker.
O’Brien appreciates the quick transition from one NFL week to the next, especially one where his club risked being shutout for the fourth time ever in franchise history, playoffs included.
Said O’Brien: “I think that’s a good thing. I think that we came in here last night as coaches, we worked at it, we got a little bit of sleep and we got back up early and we have a pretty good idea of what we want to do. Now we have to have good meetings and communicate it to the players and good jog-throughs and get the players to know precisely what we want to do and build that and be ready to go on Thursday night.”
Kickoff for Texans-Colts is at 7:20 p.m. on FOX, NFL Network, Amazon Prime, and Twitch.