The Josh Innes Show - Are the Texans back in the mix?

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

The Texans beat the 49ers and looked pretty good doing it. Are they back in the mix? Also, NRG is a dead stadium. The passion for the team seems to be nil. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Well, what we had this weekend in the NFL was maybe the worst weekend of football in the history of NFL football. I have nothing to back that up. I have no data that shows there was ever a slate of games that were worse. But the matchups sucked and the scores indicated that they were crappy matchups. I think every game outside of the Jets game, which was a blowout for most of it, that every game that happened was at least, I want to say, a 10 points. I think 10 points plus outside of the Jets game. which was a one-point victory. Outside of that, every game was double digits. It was an awful

waste of time football weekend with nothing super competitive, awful football. Now, if you're looking for a positive, the positive to come out of this weekend is that the Texans won. Now, do I think the Texans have turned a corner? No. Do I think they looked better? Yes. Let's get into this. Let's play a couple commercials and get moving. Now streaming on Paramount Plus It's the epic return of Mayor of Kingstown Warden? You know who I am. Starring Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner.

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This is big. Get the new iPhone 17 Pro at tellus.com slash iPhone 17 Pro on select plans. Conditions and exclusions apply. So I don't believe the text in the text. are somehow a better team than they were 10 days ago, seven days ago, three days ago. I don't think the Texans are a very good team. I think their offense is very mediocre. There was a reason why. We said this on Friday. Why is it that the Texans are so bad and

they've played so poorly and they just got their dicks knocked off by Seattle? Why are they favored in this game? And I think what's eventually happened to San Francisco, it all kind of caught up with them. San Francisco was kind of surviving and they battled through all these injuries. and things worked out for San Francisco and they were surviving with Mac Jones and they were surviving without Kiddle and they were surviving without all of these key pieces and it finally caught up with them

I think is what happened and they're going to get purdy back and we'll see what happens and they've got to get healthy. But I don't view the Texans win as some sort of special monumental win. Like I get they beat a team that has five wins. Not all five win teams are created equal.

Look, it's a nice win. Like you'd rather have that than a loss. It keeps you afloat, although I don't really see a situation where they're going to get into the postseason, unless they just rattle off a ton of wins. They're going to have to get on a hot streak, and they've got a tough schedule coming up, so I don't foresee that happening. But that isn't a very good San Francisco team. That is an injury-depleted San Francisco team, and there's a reason why San Francisco was an underdog going into that game.

And we talked about that on Friday. There's got to be a reason why. I still didn't think the Texans would win. They did, and I'll give them credit. But I can't sit there today and be like, hey, what a win, we're back. because you know what happened the last time you did that? You played the Ravens and beat the shit out of the Ravens. You know what you did the next week?

You went out and got your dicks knocked off by Seattle. So look, they got to rattle off a couple of wins in a row and make this a consistent thing. Now, the one consistency has been the defense. And I think they've finally given up, I guess now they've eclipsed 100 points allowed this year. But their scoring defense has been remarkable. There is no question about that. They have given up 103 points on the season. There is not a team in the NFL that has given up fewer points than 103 this year.

So the Texan scoring defense has been remarkable. And they're plus 50. For a three and four football team to be plus 50 is pretty remarkable. Now, a large part of that is because they beat the Ravens by like 30. So that helped. But look, their defense is going to keep them in a lot of games. The Jaguars are clearly mortal. but here's the problem you're going to run into.

So now you've got the Colts who are 7 and 1 and they're a juggernaut. Like you're not going to catch them. So it's almost impossible mathematically for you to catch the Colts. The Colts have pretty much won the division. So there's 7 and 1. Now you have to start looking around teams that you can catch. By the way, the Chiefs are 4 and 3. So you're behind them.

You're behind the Chargers. You're behind the Broncos. You're behind the Jaguars. You're behind the Patriots. You're behind the Bills. You've got the same number of wins as Cincinnati. and Cincinnati should have, could have won, and you're chasing Pittsburgh or whoever's going to win that division, whatever. Point being in all of this is it is a long way to go for you to have any chance to do anything significant.

So I'm not even going to talk about playoffs. I just look at it from a game to game basis. And what I saw was a team that played much better. They were very good offensively. CJ Stroud's a wild character, man, because there are some days you watch Stroud and he looks like he's despondent and on the verge of tears and completely lost and totally uninterested. And then you watch him yesterday and he's zinging it all over the place. Every throw is a dime. He's a machine.

And you have to give me more consistency. I can't watch a guy who looks like he's on the verge of cutting himself. And then the next week see a guy that's out there throwing for three bills. You're not going to be successful that way. That's not how it's going to be. Then after the game, he was asked about the fans and everything. And he talked about how much he loves Houston and how passionate. That's all well and good.

But go play better and play better consistently. When I watch this guy play, again, he looks like he's on the verge of tears half the time. And then the other half of the time I'm watching him and he's out there slinging it. Like, yesterday what we saw was like what we initially saw. And it's even more impressive because he did it without, really, obviously his main weapon, Nico Collins wasn't there. His two main weapons weren't there. And he just went out and made shit happen with the others, the other guys that were there.

And it was impressive. Do that a couple more times. Get over 500, which again, it's going to be a tough task, which are three and five. for now, and you've got the Broncos. The Broncos are killing people, but could you beat them? Maybe. But you got the Broncos, Jags, Titans. If you can somehow beat the Broncos, you are going to be favored probably against the Jaguars at home, and you're definitely favored against the Titans. Again, I'm not trying, again, I said I wasn't going to talk about playoffs, now I'm talking about playoffs. You've won three of your last four games. Again, those are games against shitty teams and

the 49ers who are okay, fine. Season's probably over. But I can't believe I'm doing this because 10 seconds ago I said I wouldn't do it. But now that I'm looking at the schedule, I'll do it. I've got to see what the spread is. Let me see. I'm going to take a guess. Let's take a guess on what the Broncos Texan spread is. As good as the Broncos have been. And I would assume the Broncos are going to be favored, but not by much. Like this could be two. Let me take a look. I'm going to look at this. I'm going to say that the Broncos are favored by less than a field goal. It's going to be less than a field goal either way. But let's

see, I'm going to say Broncos the slight favorites. Let's see. Next week, it is one and a half. So the Broncos are a one and a half point favorite at the Texans. You win that game. You should win your next two. So at that point, you're writing a four-game winning streak

when you play the bills. And if you win these next three games, which let's see, all of a sudden you're at what, five and four at that point. You're above 500. You're playing better ball? Actually, that'd be three in a row, so that'd be six. You'd be six and four. Again, you have to do it. And will they beat the Broncos? I don't know. Could they? Sure. Why not? They could. Like, I'm not huge on the Broncos. I get the Broncos have been winning games and they've pulled

off a couple of close ones. Then they beat the shit out of the Cowboys, who are a bad team on the road, so whatever. But if you look at the Broncos, the Broncos almost lost to the Jets a couple weeks ago. Now, granted, that game was overseas and whatever, but they damn near lost that game. And they've played a lot of close games. That game yesterday was the first game of theirs that wasn't decided in walk-off fashion, basically. They beat the Giants by a point. They beat the Jets by two. They beat the Eagles by four. They beat the shit out of the Bengals, but with Browning. And then they beat the Titans by eight. So when they're winning games or losing games, they're basically coming down to the wire every time. So I don't think they're that good. That

eventually evens out. When you win and lose these games like that, they kind of balance themselves out. Could the Texans win it? They could. They could win that game. And then all of a sudden, you're a 500 football team that's won four out of five. And who knows? Again, it's a long shot. I don't think they're going to make the playoffs because you don't really control your own destiny at this point. But you can at least make it interesting. The other thing that stood out to me in watching the game is just nobody gives a shit in Houston. Generally speaking, I'm not someone that's going to sit here and rip fans, and I'm not going to rip the people. You've got to give people a reason to want to go to the game. But I saw that, I think it was Stephanie Stradley, who

posted that Mark Vandermere sent out this email urging fans to get to the game early and be loud. And I saw the reactions to that. And I think it was Stephanie who said, look, Mark is so passionate, blah, blah, blah. Like, I don't think Mark sent this out of the goodness of his heart. I'm going to guess his bosses were like, hey, can you write something that we can send out to all of our season ticket holders and fans to let them know that we want them to be passionate at the game. It's our H-Town Pride Day and all this. shit. That place is like a morgue, man. Houston's not a good sports city. We know Houston's not a good sports city. Relative to Philadelphia,

Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas. It's just, it's not a good sports city. When things are winning and it's fun, like when the Astros were really at their peak a couple years ago, that's fucking fun. When the rockets are in the finals, you know, in the mid-90s, it's fun. This is not a place that goes to support shitty, boring teams. And the Texans at this point, so far through this year and through a lot of last year, which is kind of a middling, kind of boring team. And San Francisco seemingly took over the stadium, which San Francisco is that kind of fan base. The Lions have been that kind of fan base. Like certain fan bases just takeover stadiums, and it felt like a lot of that stadium was taken

over by San Francisco people, which I get. But it just felt like a morgue. Like, I don't think people are into it. I think the passion is down. I think the interest level is down. And that happens when you're three and four and you've lost games to the Jaguars and you start out 0 and 3, people lose interest. That is not a city that's going to, you're not going to be able to keep that city's interest by not, you know, being good and having players

that people react to and like. And this is just a different world. Back in the day, like, you had the J.J. Watts and the Cushings and the Andres and like Aryans and these guys who are big-name players that, like, even when the team was flirting with 500 or even when they made the little run for the playoffs a couple years in a row, like the fans reacted to them. They reacted to the fact that they had stars and likable stars, you know. I don't think people care about the players on this team. I don't think the fans are overly in love with CJ, and that's why CJ's out there answering questions about how much he loves Houston,

because people are asking the questions, because people aren't in love with him. It's just a dull football city right now, and I just never felt like I was never into that game watching it. And I think that's normal. I don't live there, but me and Jilly, two years ago, when they're making that playoff push and they beat the Browns in the playoffs, we're all into it. Now we're sitting here in Detroit and it's like we see what good football looks like with the lions and it's like, I'm not overly into watching the Texans do whatever

it is the Texans do. They're just a boring team. They don't play good football. They play very well defensively and it keeps them in games. But they're just, people aren't locked in. And then you see the crowd and they're a late arriving, early leaving crowd. That's just who the Texans are. That's who the Texans fan base is. But you've got to give them more to be interested in. And there's just not much to be interested in. So I watched that game. good for them that they won. They keep their playoff hopes alive because if they would have lost, they were done so it's a good win.

They looked better than they've looked offensively. String together a couple more of these. Don't come out and lay an egg in Seattle. You know what I'm saying? Like you did two weeks ago, don't lay an egg. When you come out and you play the Broncos, don't get beaten by 15. Go out there and beat them. Do better.

All right, more to come.