Tag: Joe Mixon

Chiefs DC Steve Spagnuolo shares his thoughts on the Texans offense: ‘They’re in complete synergy’

Kansas City #Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo shares his thoughts on the Houston #Texans offense: ‘They’re in complete synergy’ | @EdEastonJr

Kansas City Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo spoke with reporters on Wednesday about his game plan to slow down the Houston Texans’ offense this Saturday.

“They (Texans QB C.J. Stroud and Texans WR Nico Collins) look like they’re in complete synergy (meshes hands together), and not just those two and not just that wideout,” said Spagnuolo. “I think they have a tight end (Texans TE Dalton Schultz) that’s really effective, their slot receivers (Texans WR Tank Dell) really good, and then the running back (Texans RB Joe Mixon), who we saw a lot when he was in Cincinnati –boy, what a find he was for them and he – and not just as a running back. He catches the ball out of the backfield, too.”

The Chiefs defense held the Cleveland Browns to seven points in last Sunday’s 21-7 victory, registering a season-high six takeaways in the process. It marks the club’s first game with six or more takeaways since the team recorded eight takeaways vs. the New York Jets in a Week 3 game in the 2016 season. 

“We hadn’t played the Texans since C.J. (Stroud) had gotten there, so we really hadn’t studied them other than seeing highlights and whatnot, but he’s as impressive as you had heard about people talking. (He’s) really poised for a second-year quarterback, and I think he just has a unique ability to move around in the pocket and still have his eyes downfield.” said Spagnuolo. “He makes a lot of plays slipping in and out of the pocket and finding an open receiver, and when a quarterback can do that, I think that’s pretty dangerous.”

The Texans have clinched a postseason spot this year and will likely host a wild-card game. Kansas City’s last home regular-season game will energize the defense, which will be looking to repeat last week’s performance.

Texans star RB Joe Mixon expects to play vs. Chiefs in Week 16

Joe Mixon might be limited at practice, but he’s full-go for Saturday’s showdown in Kansas City.

Joe Mixon might have been limited during Tuesday’s walkthrough practice, but the Houston Texans aren’t worried about his status for Saturday’s road test against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Mixon, who’s less than 90 yards away from becoming the first Texans running back to eclipse 1,000 yards in a season since Carlos Hyde in 2019. isn’t concerned, either.

“We’re starting playoff football right now,” Mixon told reporters Tuesday. “I’ve got to be there, and I’m going to be there. I’mma be there for my teammates and obviously for myself.”

Mixon suffered an ankle injury in the first half of Sunday’s win over the Miami Dolphins after linebacker Jordyn Brooks used an illegal hip-drop tackle technique to bring him down. While he never was ruled out, he was limited for most of the second half.

Mixon said he didn’t blame Brooks for the hit because it differed from the tackle made by Chicago Bears linebacker T.J.Edwards in Week 2 that sidelined him for five games.

“People just get lazy on tackles, and unfortunately, that’s the result,” Mixon said. “The best thing is I’m up walking and obviously finished the game.”

Currently averaging 82.7 yards per game, Mixon’s bell-cow, bruising running style has been a constant toward the offensive success. In games where he rushes for 100 yards, the Texans are 5-2.

Kansas City, which could be without three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes because of an ankle injury, is only giving up 91.9 rushing yards per game, the third-fewest in the league.

Kickoff is scheduled for noon CT. The game will be nationally televised on NBC.

Derek Stingley Jr., Joe Mixon among 102 players given superlatives by ESPN

Danielle Hunter, Joe Mixon and Derek Stingley Jr. each feature one trait that makes them a “standout player” in 2024.

How good are the Houston Texans?

As a roster, perhaps a bit underwhelming.

As individuals? A trio of names continue to impress heading into the home stretch.

In the latest article from ESPN, defensive end Danielle Hunter, running back Joe Mixon and cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. all were the top players for a certain superlative that stands out as an “elite trait” in 2024.

Mixon, who’s on pace to become the Texans’ first 1,000-yard rusher since Carlos Hyde in 2019, was named the NFL’s “vision/instincts” runner.

“Mixon has been an easy fit in Houston’s zone run game, pressing the ball to the edge and finding the cutback lanes,” ESPN’s Matt Bowen wrote. “Mixon is averaging 88.7 rushing yards, the third most in the league.”

Hunter, a dark horse to win the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year Award, was given the accolade for “best spin move” after recording 10.5 sacks in 14 games.

“A super disruptive edge defender, Hunter leads the NFL with a pass rush win rate of 27.9%,” Bowen wrote. “He has a devastating spin move that puts blockers in conflict. Hunter’s 10.5 sacks and 42 pressures both rank in the top three around the league.”

Stingley, who’s transformed into a top-three cornerback entering Year 3, was given the title of “best backfield vision” for his ability to read quarterbacks.

“An emerging star in the league, Stingley can overlap seam balls and get a jump on in-breakers because of his backfield vision in the Texans’ scheme,” Bowen wrote. “He has three interceptions and 11 pass breakups.”

The Texans return to NRG Stadium to face off against the Miami Dolphins on Sunday. With a victory, Houston would guarantee a second-winning season under DeMeco Ryans.

Kickoff is scheduled for noon CT.

Joe Mixon has interesting comment for player just waived by Bengals

Joe Mixon is back (sort of) talking about the Bengals again.

When the Cincinnati Bengals waived wideout Trenton Irwin this week, the veteran had some pretty interesting things to say in his goodbye message to fans.

Below that message on social media, former Bengals running back Joe Mixon had some things to say, too.

Mixon wrote the following on the post: “Nahhhh that’s real tho TI you gone land on yo feet bro it only gets better I promise you”

Plenty of players past and present commented on the post.

Mixon is more notable than most, though. He just got done sharing some not-so-nice thoughts about the Bengals in a big interview and it’s not the first time he’s had some eyebrow-raising things to say about the team.

Among former Bengals, Mixon has by far been the most vocal since leaving in recent years. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, as it gives fans a look at how those around the team are feeling as things unfold, for better or worse.

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Watch: Texans RB Joe Mixon continues Pro Bowl season with TD vs. Jaguars

Houston Texans running back Joe Mixon is unstoppable against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday at EverBank Stadium.

Don’t look now, but the Houston Texans have scored a second-half offensive touchdown.

While not a notable achievement for many, Joe Mixon’s 7-yard touchdown run against the Jacksonville Jaguars was just the second touchdown in the second half since Week 6 for Houston’s offense.

Houston’s drive spanned five plays and 70 yards. Mixon ran on back-to-back plays to finish the possession in the end zone. He gained 37 yards on the two carries. Before the drive, Mixon had nine carries for 22 yards.

Mixon’s score is his 11th touchdown of the season, marking a career-best since his Pro Bowl season in 2021 with the Cincinnati Bengals.

Houston opened the drive with three consecutive passes, picking up a pair of double-digit gains from Nico Collins and Dalton Schultz.

Both of the pass catchers were shaken up after their receptions.

With a win, the Texans will improve to 4-1 in the AFC South enter next week’s bye.

DJ Reader latest former Bengals star to prove Cincy’s building wrong

DJ Reader, Joe Mixon, Jessie Bates and more — the players the Bengals let get away keep shining elsewhere.

A frustrating season for Cincinnati Bengals fans has been underlined in red ink with former key members of the team shining elsewhere.

DJ Reader is merely the latest.

Reader, now a member of the elite Detroit Lions defense, left this past offseason and has mostly kept up his usual level of play for the Super Bowl hopeful.

With Detroit, Reader has three sacks and four tackles for loss, each number more than he had last year over 14 games with the Bengals.

Perhaps more notably, he’s outpacing his replacement, Sheldon Rankins, who has appeared in seven games with the Bengals and posted one sack and tackle for loss. Due to a viral illness, he missed the game before the bye last week and will miss Week 13 against Pittsburgh, at a minimum.

Granted, the Bengals were attempting to replace Reader via a platoon of rookies, plus Rankins. But none of those guys were pure nose tackles like Reader. And while he entered free agency after a torn quad, so letting him walk was somewhat understandable at the time, the general idea of how to replace him certainly wasn’t.

But that doesn’t make it sting less when Reader is just the latest in a long line of whiffs.

Joe Mixon has revived his career in Houston. Jessie Bates is an All-Pro and the current state of the Bengals defense speaks for itself. Even Kevin Zeitler is still playing elite ball and would have been a Ring of Honor candidate, had they kept him.

At some point, this is a brutal reflection of the Bengals’ front office and Duke Tobin in how they do business and select players. Now, the results of critical mistakes are showing up big on the field — in Cincinnati and elsewhere in the NFL.

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Jaguars vs. Texans: Key matchups

Jaguars vs. Texans: Key matchups

The Jacksonville Jaguars are coming off their bye week, ideally refreshed and refocused for their final stretch of the 2024 season as they host Houston this weekend.

This will be a crucial six-game marathon for the Jaguars as the future around the coaching staff and front office hangs in the balance following a lowly 2-9. On a positive note, franchise quarterback Trevor Lawrence appears closer to returning to play this week after missing two games with an injury to his non-throwing shoulder.

While Jacksonville almost certainly won’t make the postseason, it could begin to cause some panic among Houston fans with an upset.

Jaguars Wire takes a closer look at some of the key matchups for this weekend.

Jacksonville WR Brian Thomas Jr. vs. Houston CB Derek Stingley Jr.

This one-on-one battle represents two gifted athletes who will be among the best players at their respective positions for years to come. Stingley has been playing at a high level this season and is one of Houston’s best defenders while Thomas has emerged as one of the better young wide receivers in the league and one of the faces of Jacksonville’s future.

It can’t be emphasized enough how crucial of a matchup this is. Thomas has played well the last several weeks and emerged as the Jaguars’ top playmaker this year. With Lawrence potentially back under center, the team’s first-round selection this year could see his target share increase.

Stingley is one of the best man-cover corners in the game. He uses his size, technique, and pure athleticism to shut down any receiver who lines up against him. Thomas offers the skill set to beat man defenders at will with the incredible fluidity, short-area quickness and ultra-explosiveness that has made him a three-level threat.

If Thomas wins this battle, Jacksonville will be one step closer to pulling off an upset.

Jaguars’ offensive line vs. Texans’ defensive line

For as bad as things have been for the Jaguars this season, their offensive line remains steady, especially in the interior. The team has allowed the sixth-lowest pressure rate in the NFL (28.7%) and will take on a Texans’ defense that ranks third in pressure rate (40.3%).

Winning in the trenches has been an up-and-down battle for Jacksonville all season and Sunday features a chance to win there on both sides of the ball. According to Next Gen Stats, Jaguars guards Exra Cleveland and Brandon Scherff and center Mitch Morse have all allowed pressure on under five percent of their pass-blocking snaps. 

The edges are where it gets tricky as tackles Walker Little and Anton Harrison will be going up against Texans defensive ends Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson Jr., one of the best pass-rushing duos in the league. Jacksonville will need its young tackles to have quality starts to slow down Houston’s pass rushers.

This is not a favorable matchup for the Jaguars. It could be if Harrison and Little can stay consistent in their pass-blocking sets and generate momentum in the run game on the edges, which will be key in taking on the No. 5 defense in yards allowed. 

Houston RB Joe Mixon vs. Jacksonville run defense

One of the stories of the Jaguars this season has been their putrid defensive play in almost all facets, especially against the run where they have allowed the seventh-most rushing yards in the NFL (135.5).

However, interestingly enough, they have defended the run well on outside-designed runs. Jacksonville has allowed the second-fewest rushing yards over expected (-65) and the seventh-lowest success rate (34.0%) on those specific play calls, according to Next Gen Stats.

Defensive ends Josh Hines-Allen and Travon Walker have been big reasons for Jacksonville’s success against outside runs. Walker is third on the team in run stops (35) and Hines-Allen has 23 on the season. Their power at the point of attack and discipline against the run has been very notable this year. 

This week, they’ll take on Mixon, who has run nine of his touchdowns to the outside and has the fifth-most RYOE (+116) in that area in the NFL. Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik tends to use the outside zone to work away from the tackle box and stress defenders on the edges.

Setting the edge will be key for the Jaguars, especially against Mixon. Walker and Hines-Allen must do their job to squeeze their respective gaps and become force defenders to bottle Mixon inside.

If the Jaguars can limit Mixon’s ability to stretch the edge, Jacksonville will have a chance to pull off a nice victory on Thanksgiving weekend. 

Joe Mixon is back with more comments about Bengals

The former Bengals RB had some things to get off his chest.

Former Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon has had some interesting comments about his former team since being traded to the Houston Texans last offseason.

Mixon’s latest once again straddled the line between appreciating his time with the Bengals and criticizing elements around the team, from local media to coaches.

Speaking with Josina Anderson before Week 12, Mixon tackled everything from past misuse on the field and more.

“I appreciate my time there. I had a hell of a seven years,” Mixon said. “When it came down to it, it was an unfortunate situation where things changed a little bit and obviously they had them fake a** beat writers, reporters out there. I don’t care, I’m not there any more… When it come down to it, my teammates know what it is.”

Mixon continued: “One thing that I can appreciate here [in Houston] is they utilize my skillset. I’ve always been a threat in the passing game and one thing about here, they give me my screens. They give me my choices, they give me flat routes that I can take. They give me all types of combinations. They utilize me.”

Mixon has enjoyed a fantastic season with the Texans, gaining 786 yards and scoring 10 times on a 4.6 per-carry average. He’s also been targeted 34 times through the air.

That said, Mixon was the unquestioned workhorse for the Bengals, last year alone carrying it 257 times with 64 targets through the air. He had minimums of 210 carries and 48 targets in each of his last three seasons in Cincinnati.

It speaks to how the Bengals felt about Mixon that they shipped him to a strong fit for his skillset with another AFC contender when deciding to change things up.

While the 2024 Bengals are obviously very far from perfect, they’ve enjoyed seeing the idea that Chase Brown is a better fit for the offense they want to run via the sophomore breakout’s 607 yards and five scores on a 4.3 average, plus his 35 catches and two scores through the air.

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Jessie Bates isn’t only former elite Bengals player at weak position right now

Another Bengals mistake still hurts them while the player they let get away shines.

By now, the Cincinnati Bengals are probably tired of hearing about how good some former players are doing with new teams.

Like Joe Mixon. And Jessie Bates, who earned an All-Pro nod last year and is right on his way to doing so again this season.

But they’re not alone.

One guy who often gets lost in the conversation? Detroit Lions guard Kevin Zeitler, who as of this writing, has 90-plus PFF grades in each of his last two outings and is the overall third-highest-graded guard in the NFL.

Zeitler is an infamous, yet easy-to-overlook part of modern Bengals history. The team took him in the first round in 2012, seemingly only did so because they had two first round picks in that draft, then never made a serious push to give him an extension.

While Zeitler hasn’t been fantastic everywhere he’s been since, he’s 34 years old and still doing fantastic at a spot that is currently a problem for Joe Burrow’s offense. Really, they haven’t truly fixed it since his departure. Had Zeitler remained all this time, he’d be staring at a Ring of Honor spot.

Instead, Zeitler goes on the pile of solid guys the Bengals drafted and developed, then let get away. He’s not a Bates-level player, but he’s in that Andrew Whitworth-type mistake bracket that the team never really recovered from.

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Texans Wire Player of the Game: RB Joe Mixon

Houston Texans running back Joe Mixon put up a hat trick during Monday Night Football’s showdown against the Dallas Cowboys.

When the Houston Texans traded for Joe Mixon this offseason, many figured he’d be around for a one-year deal.

When the Texans inked him to a new three-year extension, there were some concerns. Most running backs dwindle with age, leading to regression in carries and explosive runs.

That memo hasn’t reached Mixon entering mid-November down off NRG Drive.

Mixon scored three touchdowns in a 34-10 win over the Dallas Cowboys on “Monday Night Football” at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. He finished 109 rushing yards and averaged 5.5 yards per play.

“Joe, when he’s on, he’s a force for us,” Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said. “The run game starts with our offensive line. I challenged them to play fast, play aggressive. I thought they did a really nice job. I really like the way we just kept churning it in the run game, and proud of the guys for stepping up to the challenge.”

After Nico Collins’ 78-yard touchdown reception was called back on the opening play, Houston trusted its ground game. Mixon broke free for a 45-yard score, his second-longest run of the regular season to give the Texans an early 7-0 lead.

He also scored on a 2-yard run in the first quarter and a 1-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter.

Mixon, who finished 109 rushing yards, tied a Texans single-game record for rushing touchdowns, becoming the fourth player in franchise history to accomplish the feat.

“I think everybody was dialed in on the game plan, and we came out here and executed for four quarters,” Mixon said. “It was a great thing to see the O-line pretty much go out there and impose their will.”

The Texans also showed promise on the offensive line. C.J. Stroud completed 67.7% of his passes for 257 yards and an interception. He also was only sacked once and pressured three times.

But Mixon scored the points, so he’s Week 11’s Player of the Week for Texans Wire. This marks the third time he’s taken home the title after putting up a league-leading 159 yards in Week 1 and 115 yards in Week 7.

The Texans return to NRG Stadium to take on the Tennessee Titans this Sunday at noon CT.