The Josh Innes Show - Texans/Rams...Woof

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

The Texans opened the 2025 season with a thud. The offense looked mediocre. The positive? The defense was strong. Is the AFC South going to be better than we thought? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Miller Light, the light beer brewed for people who love the taste of beer and the perfect pairing for your game time. When Miller Light set out to brew a light beer, they had to choose great taste or 90 calories per can. They chose both because they knew the best part of beer is the beer. Your game time tastes like Miller Time. Learn more at millerlight.ca. Must be legal drinking age. All right, everybody, good morning, about 4.30, not that it matters to you, but about 4.30 here on Monday, fresh off of a lot of beers and a lot of football over the weekend. Let me give you an update, actually, on where we stand on my quest to drink as much beer as possible during the season. We are two weeks in. I started this. I don't even know if I've talked about this on the podcast. I think I've only done it on social media. So I was really just wanting to.

to kind of get an idea of how much beer I drink on a football weekend, not counting beers I drink at bars or at restaurants or anywhere else at a ball game, for instance, because that's kind of hard to keep track of. Just the number of cans slash bottles of beer slash alcoholic beverages, canned cocktails, whatever, that I drink at home over the course of a weekend, which is usually just going to be Saturday and Sunday, although Friday the last two weeks has been a thing because there was an NFL game on Friday and I decided not to go out.

I didn't want to run the risk of going to a bar that didn't have the game because it was on YouTube. So I did drink at home on Friday as well. But a little update for you. So in week one, I had 34 beers Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Actually, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. That included a holiday on the Monday. And then this week, I had 34 beers. How about that?

It's like my body knows. 34 beers both weeks, whereas Jilly had 24 beers last week and 20 this week, if you were looking for an update. Look, I'm not sitting there telling you that I'm proud that I drink so much beer, but I'm sitting around. It's Sunday. There's like 12 hours of football on, if you count the night game, some good games, some crappy games, some gambling going on, like good times. And I like to drink beer. and when it's ice cold, like I had a lot of coer's lights this weekend. My boss actually brought me a case of coer's light on Friday because he said,

I saw your social media and you're on this quest to drink however many beers over the course of a season. You want to see how many beers you drink? Well, here's a case. They brought me 24 Coors Light, so that helped me out. Because, look, your boy ain't making that cash like I used to. So anybody that wants to give me free beer, I'll take it. And I finished off that case among, you know, and then. some. But anywho, so 34 beers in back-to-back weeks. So I was trying, the gist of this was to

have people guess how many beers they think I'll drink over the course of a season. That runs all the way through the Super Bowl. Keep in mind, some things will be different because on Saturdays, you know, after December, there won't be a lot of football, for instance, right? So on Saturdays, you'll get a lot of Sunday. You will get some NFL on Saturdays, but it'll run all the way through the Super Bowl and we'll keep count. So so far then, if I'm doing the math correctly. I think I've had 68 home beers in the first two weeks of the football season. Hot damn, we're cooking. Anyway, let's play some commercials and then we will get into all the stuff of the weekend. Hey, it's Josh. The NFL season is rolling along and every touchdown can

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slash go slash NFL Sunday ticket slash terms, limited time offer. This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine, the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar Rally, the ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca. TD Bank knows that running a small business is a journey, from startup to growing and managing your business.

That's why they have a dedicated small business advice hub on their website, to provide tips and insights on business banking to entrepreneurs. No matter the stage of business you're in, visit td.com slash small business advice to find out more or to match with a TD small business banking account manager. First off, the Texans are terrible. Look, they're not terrible. But they don't look very good.

That was not an impressive game. I guess the impressive part is you're in that game the whole time and defensively you played pretty well. and you had a chance to win the game late, and you were driving late, and you turned it over. The other thing is, it ain't like the Rams were spectacular offensively either. So you did your job defensively. See, and that's the thing, man. I like CJ Stroud, but what is one of the things we talked about going into this season looking at the Texans?

We said, C.J. Stroud was really good and kind of burst on the scene, year one. year two it was kind of like he's good he kind of regressed a little bit he obviously was missing some big weapons Nico was hurt a lot tank Dell eventually got hurt people some were critical of the crying after tank Dell got hurt all that shit but we're like all right it's okay

look it's year two you're going to have a little hiccup let's see what happens in year three it's kind of a rubber match if you will this is an opportunity to see where he is and see if he's more of what happened in year one versus year two Well, it's a road game, but not really a road game to start the year because you're in L.A. And the L.A. crowd is not tough to play in front of. So it's not like you went into Green Bay or you went into the Superdome or somewhere that's like loud and tough to play.

You played in L.A., very passive crowd, a game that you could have should have won, and you were pretty much inept offensively for a large portion of the game, but still had a shot in the fourth, still were driving, and then you guys turned the ball over. I'm not writing them off after that game. I'm not saying, oh, this team sucks defensively. Again, now, who knows what the Rams are going to be offensively? Puka can obviously play. You've got Devante Adams now. You're skeptical of how healthy Matt Stafford can play or be. But big picture, you know, you were a slight underdog and you lost by five points.

The world keeps spinning, right? But it just feels like there's no kind of. juice about them. You know, after year one, you go into year two with a ton of juice. You come into it with people all hyped up. People are excited. People are into it. People are feeling good about the franchise. Last year you had all the hype of like Hannah and Cal McNair were kind of becoming like this kind of it couple of ownership and the people in the city fucking love them, which was a wild turnaround. You're talking about a big time difference in, you know, a difference X number of years can make. A couple of years ago, the McNair family in general was just

completely out of sight out of mind for people. If you were thinking about them, you're thinking about how much you disliked them. But now they're beloved and Hannah McNair talked shit and Cal McNair's wearing sunglasses and have barbecues out in the parking lot and the team's winning. And it's this kind of perfect

storm of this awesomeness in the franchise. And then last year ended poorly and the team kind of was sputtering last year, but they made the playoffs. Then this year you come out and score nine fucking points. That's the biggest disappointment. It's not that you went out and lost a regular season game, and it's not that you lost the opener,

and it's not that you lost to the Rams. There's no shame in losing to the Rams, because, again, when Stafford's healthy is very good, Pooka and Akua is very good. Devonte Adams has seemingly found like a new life there in Los Angeles. There are a lot of factors that you can say, okay, losing week one, and by the way, it's week one in the NFL. Nobody's really on their game yet because nobody plays in the preseason. So, like, it's okay to go out and play kind of flat, play kind of poor. The issue is you don't even score a touchdown. The issue is like you're, now, on the other side of that, you don't even score a touchdown

and you are driving and could have, should have, would have won the game in the last drive of the game, despite the fact you did not score a touchdown, despite the fact that you did nothing offensively in the entire second half, despite the fact that, like, I don't even think they scored a point in the second half of the game. They didn't put together one memorable drive in the second half of the game. And despite all that, you're in the game. Despite that, you're driving with a chance to win the game. So you look at it and go, like, what do you take away from this game?

What is your biggest takeaway? My takeaway is, CJ didn't play well, turned the ball over, didn't have a touchdown. The running game was okay. Nick Chubb was fine. But big picture, you didn't run the ball particularly well. a good portion of your, a good chunk of your rushing yards came from the quarterback, which is probably not going to be sustainable for you. Nico Collins was a no-show for the most part.

All of these things that you look at as a negative, and they were, yet with four or five minutes to go in the game, you have a chance to go in it. You caught some breaks, obviously, in that as well. If you look at the way things went with the Rams, the catch and the fumble late in the game. But just looking at the big picture of this game in the second half after the Rams' scored the touchdown to take the lead. Texans, interception, Rams, punt, Texans punt, fourth quarter, Rams punt, Texans punt, Rams fumble, Texans fumble game over. It just was really kind of an ugly game anyway, but you look at that fumble drive. I mean, they're putting

together a drive. You know, you got four minutes, nine seconds to go. You're at your own 19, you're down five points, and you're running the ball. The best they ran the ball, seemingly all game. Nick Chubb had a handful of big runs in that drive. Say a handful. He had two big ones. They were able to move the ball in the air in that drive as well. And you're driving at that point. And you're all the way down to the 25 before you fumble the ball. Like it looked like you were going in to win the game. So again, you watch the way that game turned out and it does suck that offensively, you were kind of a no-show, didn't score a touchdown. There's a lot of things that sucked about the Texans game. But if you are looking for

the optimist's viewpoint of it, which I know you don't get from me very often, but the optimist would say, okay, you lost. You're on the road, you're an underdog, week one on the road, you don't score a touchdown in the game, you do not score a point in the second half of the game, you turn the ball over two times, yet there you were, 25 yards away from a win. If you don't fumble the ball, maybe you march in and score, and we tell a completely different story about the game. It's hard for me to look at week one and go,

Holy shit, they're cooked. Holy shit, they're good. There are some situations I think you can look at that because certain teams are just a mess or certain teams are amazing. Like, we'll get into the Buffalo game. That Buffalo game was amazing, okay? But you're not going to get a ton of amazing games. Look, Aaron Rogers was amazing yesterday. He looked like old school Aaron Rogers and they rallied to win against the Jets.

That was fucking awesome. Like, there are cool things you can look at that happened in the NFL in particular games over the weekend and go, okay, that tells me something. I don't know who the Texans are after one week. And as I said, look at all the things that went against them. Look at the fact that, again, you didn't score a fucking point in the second half of the game. Yet there you were, after turning the ball over multiple times in the game. Your best offensive player, arguably, your best skill guy, Nico Collins, basically a no-show. You're not moving the ball down the field vertically.

Your quarterback hasn't thrown a touchdown. You've thrown a pick. You've turned the ball over multiple times, yet there you are late in the game with a shot. And if you don't drop the ball, you probably go in and win that game. And again, then it's a whole different story. Then we talk about a different universe. We're talking about, holy shit, the Texans were able to overcome all of these issues and win the game. Alas, they didn't.

So now we sit here today on a Monday and we go, okay, what does this mean for the Texans? What's the post-mortem? What does it mean compared to the rest of the teams in the division? Look, I think the Titans, look, if you want to look in the division, the Titans looked better than we thought they would. played a hell of a game considering they were the biggest underdog of the week to go in and play. I don't think Denver is some sort of juggernaut by any means. Denver may run into what the Texans ran into last year where you shocked the world. You're a playoff team. You've done well. And then the next year comes along and your second year quarterback has to

adjust to be in a second year quarterback. And no longer are people taking you lightly. You're a team that people hunt. Like there's all of those factors. But like Tennessee played better than we thought they would, for the most part, with a rookie quarterback. I thought they played well on the road in Denver and could have should have won that game. They had multiple opportunities to do so. And the Colts. Now, maybe they had Jim Ursay's powers with all the shit they were doing to celebrate Jim

Ursay. But they throttled the Dolphins. Now, a large part of that might just be that the dolphins are a cluster fucking a train wreck and their coach is going to be fired sooner rather than later. So that's a huge factor in that as well. And then the Jaguars took care of business as they were supposed to take care of business. their game. So maybe the division will be better than we thought it was. So who knows? But big picture, like, what do you take from that game? What do you take from the Texans

losing that game the way they did? And my biggest takeaway is, look, defensively, you're still there? Look, as much as we say the Texans didn't score in the second half, after the first drive of the second half, the touchdown drive from the Rams to go up 14 to 9, guess what? They didn't score either. So the defense against a pretty good offense. Pooka Naku is a fucking good player. Devante Adams is a good player. That is a good offense. Matt Stafford, although beat up

Matt Stafford is still a guy that can sling it. You held them off the board after the first drive of the second half. So defensively, you feel good about where you are. You're forced to turn over late to give yourself a chance. Like, you feel good about where they are defensively. 14 points is good. What you don't feel good about? Obviously, is

scoring nine points. You couldn't put the ball in the goddamn end zone. That's a problem. But after one week, I can't tell you, oh, my God, this team is too. Like, I know that the Saints aren't going to win a ton of games, right? Like, you watch a team like the Saints. You know they're not going to win a ton of football games. They played a competitive game, had a shot to win it at the end. But after that game, it doesn't change my opinion of who the Saints are going to be.

They're going to be a team that's going to win three, four, five games probably. They are a non-threat. They may upset someone. Maybe Spencer Rattler plays the game of his life at some point. Maybe a team turns it over four times and the Saints win. They are not a contender. They are not a threat. I know that about the Saints.

I don't need to see much more than I've seen to tell you that. Titans, probably not much of a threat, although after week one, I feel like, hey, the Titans, maybe better than we thought they would be. I look at the Texans and I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what they are. Because again, it's the rubber match, if you will, of the first three, it's the first three years of C.J. Stroud and D'Amico. One really good year. One kind of, okay, fine, it's the second year.

year people adjust to us. Now, third year, you've got to show me something. They showed me nothing offensively, which is concerning. Defensively, they're going to stay in a lot of games that way. I do think it is concerning that the offense looked the way it did. The hope is they didn't play much in the preseason. The hope is once you get, you know, your legs under and you play two, three games, you start to hit a stride. I'm not writing them off, but I think the division may, after one week, the division may not be better than we thought it was, but you might run into a situation where it's more competitive than we thought it was. Like you watch

them play the Titans in a couple weeks and you'll go, huh. Going into that game, it doesn't feel like it's as much of a lock to beat the Titans as it would have been. The Jaguars right now look like the team in the division. The Colts look dominant against the dolphins. So I think that's part of the outlook we look at too. That's my

biggest takeaway. Again, one week can change a lot of shit. I mean, look at college football, you know? You look at a team like LSU. LSU over the weekend, played like shit against La Tech, and the big win they had a week ago, you know, eight, nine days ago against Clemson doesn't look all that impressive after Clemson sputtered to win their game. So, again, weekend, week in, week out, it changes.

But I'd say my biggest takeaway from this weekend is, offensively, the team doesn't look very good. Defensively, they look pretty strong in stouts. That'll keep them in a lot of games. And big picture, the division looks like it's going to be a more competitive division, maybe not better, maybe not a bunch of teams that are going to win eight, nine games. It's not going to be the AFC North or something like that. But it looks like teams are going to be more competitive than we thought they would be, at least after week one.

And again, that could all change. All right, more to come.