The Josh Innes Show - Have The Texans Figured It Out?

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

The Texans throttled the Ravens and the offense looked good. How much of that was the Texans being better and how much of that was the Ravens being dreadful? Randoms on Twitter are coming at me over my CJ Stroud video from a few weeks ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here.

Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at OnePeloton.C.A. All right, let's see here. So yesterday, as the Texans finally played a good football game and finally dominated someone, I started getting tweets from people who had seen my video like four weeks ago about how

CJ Stroud might just suck and the team sucks. And it's like they've been waiting for this opportunity to, I don't know, quote tweet this. Or maybe they just went to social media and typed in CJ Stroud. Stroud sucks because they wanted to find somebody who said C.J. Stroud sucks so they could finally retweet them and say, you look like a clown, bro, because there's no other reason why someone who doesn't follow me or know any of my history, but has like a profile picture that is C.J. Stroud would ever tweet anything like that, but they did yesterday because C.J. Stroud finally played a good football game, so they're all excited. Let's play a couple

commercials and get into that. Stop leaving savings behind at the pump. Get up to seven cents per leader in value every time you fill up at Petro Canada. That's 3 cents per liter in instant savings plus 20% more points when you link an eligible RBC card to your Petro points. Find out more at RBC.com slash Petro-dash Canada. Conditions apply. What did your ancestors really do all day? Beyond names, what were their lives like? With Ancestry's global historical records, you can discover incredible stories about how your ancestors lived and worked. And for a limited time, you can explore select occupation records for free. Imagine finding your great-grandfather's RCM records or discovering your ancestors

name in the UK and Ireland nursing register. Don't miss out. Free access ends August 24th. Visit ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. First off, if you have a professional athlete anywhere on your social media, whether it be

your profile picture or your header picture or whatever, like your banner or whatever, you have no credibility when talking about that athlete. You don't. It's just the way things work. I don't take your opinion seriously. So like I, you Your opinion of C.J. Stroud cannot be taken seriously if you have C.J. Stroud as your profile picture on social media. If that is the case, you do not have credibility in my eyes.

So with you quote tweeting my old video from three weeks ago saying, oh, this guy's a fucking moron, congratulations, your guy has played one good game against one of the worst defense than the league. And I know it's hard to believe that the Ravens are one of the worst defense than the league. But they are. They are dreadful. They're giving up like 40 points a game. So the fact that you scored 44 on them is not some new development. They fucking suck. And the difference being this week, they had no offense to go along with that.

So instead of a 44-37 game, it was just a bludgeoning. The lions bludgeoned them. They've been bludgeoned by everybody they've played. The bills bludgeoned them. So let's not act like that was some sort of amazing victory over the 2013 Ravens or the 2000 Ravens. That's not what this was. You beat up on a shitty team and you did what you were supposed to do again. of that shitty team. Good, I'm happy for you. But coming at me and dick swinging because

two or three weeks ago, I said that C.J. Stroud might suck. My opinion hasn't changed. So, look, and I root for the Texans. I want them to win. I find them to be tough to watch, so I haven't been watching the games as closely as I have in the past. Dude, when you've got Sunday ticket, like, it's addicting to just sit there and watch the games that are more fun and the people that are better to watch. Like, my individual team fandom has kind of waned, because my team sucks. So, like, in the past, if it were the Saints, I'd flip on the Saints and watch the entire thing because I need the Saints to win because I'm rooting for the Saints.

I've accepted that the Saints suck, and they may never be good again. And the Texans are boring to watch up until yesterday when they scored 44 points. So I don't dig deep into watching Saints games. So I just kind of flip around and focus on games I'm betting on or focus on games that are just better games. And if I have the option to watch the Detroit Lions play or the Texans, I would watch the Lions play every time. Now, the Lions played later yesterday, so it wasn't really an issue.

But, like, the Lions are a joy to watch. The Texans so far this year have been awful to watch. Now, give them credit, the last two weeks, they've outscored their opponent 70 to 10. So that's a positive. They've also played one of the worst teams in football of the Titans and one of the worst defenses in football without a quarterback with fucking Cooper Rush. Congratulations, you beat fucking Cooper Rush. And I hate being put into this situation. I hate being put into the situation where I have to shit on the team that I have no desire to shit on.

But when I got people tweeting me like, this guy's a fucking clown, well, now what you've done is you've pushed me into a situation where I have to shit on your shitty team. And I didn't want to shit on your shitty team. I didn't want to shit on the Texans today. I had no desire. Like, I was going to say, hey, good for you. You beat up on the shitty Ravens. And let's see what you do against Seattle, who just scored 35 points on Tampa.

And let's see what you do against the Niners. Let's see what you do against the Broncos. Your next three games are not easy. I wouldn't call any of the teams you're facing the next three weeks unbeatable. But Seahawks, Niners, and. Broncos, as the 49ers need to get healthy, they've been dealing with a ton of injuries, but the Broncos just went to Philly and beat the Super Bowl champs, and the Seahawks should or could have would have beaten Tampa in what was an epic showdown where you ain't facing

Cooper Rush next week. You're not facing dipshit backup quarterback and abysmal defense. You're facing a Seahawks team that can score points that can move the ball. You're facing Sam Dick Darnold, so we'll see what happens. But I didn't want to be put into that situation. I did not want to be thrust into a situation where I have to shit on. the Texans for winning. I don't want to do that. But I'm also not on the local radio there, so I don't have to do a four-hour show about it. I can tell you what I think about it in 10 minutes

on this show. And what I can tell you about it is good for the Texans. You know, as bad as things have been, if they hold on and beat the bucks, let's just say they end up winning that game instead of losing 20 to 19 and getting bakered because Baker is a G. Let's say they don't blow that game. You're a three-and-two football team and things look a lot different. You know, two and three is different. I also love the, the, and three thing about teams that are 0 and 3 and 3 and don't make the playoffs? Well, what about teams that are 2 and 3? Do 2 and 3 teams make the playoffs? Or are you always just that team that was

0 and 3? Or does it change? I think we have this discussion every week too, because every week we hear about people, you know, and teams that are 0 and 3. Well, 0 and 3 teams, the only 0 and 3 that's made the playoffs in the last blank years is the Texans of 20, whatever. And it's like, cool. But now that they're no longer 0 and 3, now that they're 2 and 3, how many teams that start 2 and 3 make the playoffs? Let's look at that. How many teams that have started two and three make the NFL playoffs? Let's see.

Teams starting two and three have roughly a 25% chance of making the NFL playoffs. Around 10 to 12 teams making the postseason each year after being below or at 5. Okay, whatever. So a 25% success rate. All right, let's look at stat muse here. Again, I click on stat muse and it doesn't even take me where I want to go. fuck you stat muse you're a waste of time and I hate you uh let's see so teams that started two and three you have a 25% chance of making the playoffs so there you go one and four shot of making the playoffs but since you were oh and three again I know I ask this every week but does it change if you were oh and three does it change with each different record you have so if you are two

and three now is that different than when you were oh and three and does it change the percentages and does it nullify your original oh and three these are the questions that I ask Like, I've never thought the Texans are a dreadful football team, even though they started 0 and 3, and they were unwatchable offensively. The one consistent they've had is defensively, they've been really fucking good. They just haven't been able to make the big plays, and C.J. Stroud hasn't played well, and the offensive line has been a joke. Now they've played two back-to-back teams that can't stop anybody, so that's helped out the cause. But again, you win that game against the Bucks, and you're three and two, or you take on the Rams who are one of the better teams in the league. That's a five-point game.

If you have any offense in those games, maybe you have four wins. right now. Maybe you have three wins and we're talking about them differently. And you've got a tough stretch coming up. This, like, this is a definitive stretch that really the Ravens should have been a part of. And if Lamar were healthy, you would have at least looked at that game differently. But without Lamar, you already have a bad defense you're facing that you should exploit and get right against, and you've done that. You did that in the second half against the Titans, you got right offensively. And for the entire game, you got right against the Raven. The Raven's defense is awful. But it would have looked different and

been a more impressive win had Cooper Rush not been there. Now, here's the beauty. This isn't college football and style points don't matter. None of that shit matters. The AP poll doesn't matter. None of that matters. What you did is you went out and you beat an NFL team and that's the only thing that matters. Survive. And you did. You survived against a shitty team and you beat

them and that's good. So now it's on to the next one. You've got to go on the road against Seattle. See what you do. That's a team that should be able to move the ball, but you get to kind of see what you are defensively. The last two weeks you've shut out two really mediocre teams. I say shut out. You've shut them down. You've shut one of them out.

you've shut them down in terms of the Ravens. But season's not over. You look around the division and you're in it. I mean, the Jaguars, I don't know if anybody believes that they're a team that's going to continue winning at a 75% winning percentage. And you're kind of waiting for the Colts to come back down to Earth. But here's one of the things you got going for you when you want to talk about wild cards. The AFC North, which is supposed to be this juggernaut. The AFC North is so bad due to injuries mostly.

and the Browns, that you look around the league and you're like, why couldn't we be a wild card? You know, you've got to start winning some more games. But the one thing you've got going for you, and this is what travels, if you want to use that term, the Texans have given up 61 points so far on the year. Okay, look around the AFC.

You know how many teams in the AFC have given up 61 or fewer points? None. You've given up the fewest points of any team in the AFC. 61 points allowed will travel. You look around the NFC. No other team in the NFC has given up that few points either. So again, defensively, you've stayed in most of these games. If you could have made one or two plays, you're a three and two type of football team

and we look at you differently. But like, look around the AFC. The Patriots are three and two. That's a team you've got to contend with for a wild card spot. The AFC North has no contenders. Joe is out for basically the rest of the year. They've given up 156 points have the bangles. Their point differential is 85 to 156.

What is that? Like a minus 70, so they're dreadful, okay? The Ravens are going to fall so far behind. They're not going to be able to get into it. By the way, we make fun of the Bengals for giving up 156 points. The Ravens have given up 177 points. 177 points. Holy shit.

That's the Ravens that are doing that. That's not the Browns. That's not the Dolphins. That's not the Jets. That's the Baltimore Rains. Ravens have given up 177 points. You know how many other teams in the NFL have allowed 177 points? Zero.

They are the worst. So again, that's why I'm not overly impressed that you're able to move the ball against them. The whole world moves the ball against them. They are terrible. But you look around the AFC. You know, Broncos are right there. You know, the chiefs are going to get back in the mix for a wild card as well. Look, you're alive.

You've just got to start winning more football games. Oh, and three, it looks daunting. Two and three? Like what's the difference between starting 0 and 3 And if you would have started 2 and 2 And then lost this game to fall to 2 and 3 No matter how you got there You're still 2 and 3

And if you're a 2 and 3 team You got a shot So I'm not writing them off But I mean look You got to do something other than beating the shitty Ravens and the shitty Titans I got to see what you're going to do Because you still got tough games coming up

You know you still got the Colts on the schedule Twice before the season's over You still got the charges Who aren't nearly as impressive the last two weeks the Cardinals who are not impressive at all, the Chiefs who haven't been impressive, the Bills who lost yesterday, it's still a tough schedule.

I mean, by that logic, though, the Broncos just beat one of the best teams in the NFL on the road. So that's a tough game. 49ers are going to get healthy. That becomes a tougher game. So we'll see. Just keep winning.

That's what you've got to do. Just keep winning games and see what happens. You got to beat the teams you're supposed to beat and they beat the shit out of the Ravens. So good for them.