The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Titans Embarrass Texans, Offense Second Half Struggles, Goodbye Kikuchi, VanVleet Fined

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Matt Thomas of the "The Matt Thomas Show with Ross," Dan Mathews of "The A-Team" and Chris Gordy recap the Houston Texans losing 32-27 to the Tennessee Titans. The Titans were 2-8 coming into NRG Stadium, but even after the Texans' defense and special teams created multiple turnovers, the offense went quite in the second half. With C.J. Stroud throwing interceptions, the offensive line struggling across the board and unnecessary penalties, what can be done to fix the Texans and help them turn their season around? Matt, Dan and Chris also:debate whether Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik's job is in jeopardyreact to Yusei Kikuchi agreeing to a three-year, $63 million deal with the Los Angeles Angelspraise the Rockets for being 2-0 in NBA Cup gamesdiscuss the NBA fining guard Fred VanVleet $50,000 "for confronting and directing profane language toward the officiating staff" in the Rockets' loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturdayplay "To Tell the Truth" and more.

Launch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. 102 at H-town. Good morning, everyone. And welcome to a Monday edition of The Matt Thomas Show with Ross. Stan Matthews in. This is Sports Talk 790. This will be the 10th play of the drive.

Titans have the fewest 10 play drives, and they got a foul. They're going for it all. Westbrook Akite. He beat Derek Stingley. It's 38 yards, and the Titans take the lead. They go to Poward again. Pollard burst inside the five toward the goal line. Touchdown Titans.

Tony, Poward, with his fourth touchdown run of the year. Last three drives, 13 plays minus one total yards for the Titans and the pick six. Oconquo, he's got some inside Texas territory. Inside the 35, 30, 25, 20, he may go. Stiff up. Touchdown, Titans. Good. that good hold.

Will the Texans change their ways? There's a lot of, did you say Danny last night? There are a lot of people looking themselves in the mirror? That's what the call was in the locker room. Time to start looking yourself in the mirror. I look at myself in the mirror and like, damn, I wish I had hair sometimes. I mean, I just asked myself,

why couldn't I have been, like what Ralphie said on the Sopranos? Why couldn't I have been born rich? instead of incredibly handsome. Dang. Actually, that's a TV reference on a movie reference. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good to have you, and how are you? How are you, buddy?

I'm okay. I just got insulted on Twitter a minute ago. No, I heard about that. I haven't seen it yet. I mean, you know, it's maybe we can get into it as the show goes along, but, you know. People don't like me. No, that's okay. I mean, look, you know, it's for every one of those, there's also two that people,

when they see you on the street, will ask you, well, hey, what's a, what's the latest with Bregman. Well, wait a minute. I thought you said, oh, stupid. Why would you ask me if I'm so stupid? Well, this guy named I Am Mark Alexander was like, I said, look, I said, the fact that the Texans did not take a serious look at offensive linemen is not, it was not great. And he's like, he hates the media. And I responded, yes, our media is the worst. And he goes, okay, since you want to be as smart ass, you absolutely suck doing the play by the play for the Rockets too. I'm like, damn. And by the way, this guy named I am Mark Alexander, and let me take a look at him real quick, who he is. He says, he says, he says, he said,

He says he is Jesus, son, veteran, I love our country, healthy living, fitness enthusiast, overcomer and winter. Let me guess. I'm going to go on a limb here and say that his avatar is him doing a selfie while sitting in a truck. Well, my guess is he probably is a U-Porn enthusiast. Oh, yeah, God, this guy looks like a massive douche. Jeez. Okay, whatever. I hope you guys are in a good mood today.

I was in a great movie until I got insulted. No, you know what? It's fine. Persis are. person's right right yeah i was gonna say i mean you want fake tough guys coming after you and you can be able to rise above it and yeah we're right i got you i got you more i got conner we're right we're good to go hope you guys are in a good mood today we are here today until two o'clock i got a bug out at one to go catch a flight with the rockets because apparently i suck doing play by play but they've still kept me on doing it so i'm very happy about that

and then gordy's going to come in and hang out with you from one o'clock until two i've heard i've already written believe or not for you today i have heard that rumor i'm looking forward to it now i'm I'm not going to try to channel your game show host, you know, mannerisms and everything like that. I'm just not. It just wouldn't be genuine. I'll play it straight, but we're going to have some fun with it. It will be fun because it's also, too,

I told you a story before the show, a little bit of a personal connection. Yeah. Well, it's not a love connection, but Chuck Woolery, long-time game show host, passed away over the weekend. He did live in Horseshoe Bay. He passed with the age of 83.

I mean, Scrabble, love connection. Wheel of Fortune, greed, got into some politics towards light in his life, and that's just what, you know, he did as he was retired,

but he would be known mostly for his game show hosting over the years. Oh, I was going to say, I mean, you know, I remember Love Connection as a kid. Don't remember him from Wheel, because, I mean,

I was the first host of Wheel. I was going to say, I mean, you know, I was always Pat and Vana. Wasn't, was Tim Brando ever a host, or did he auditioned? He auditioned for Wheel.

Okay. Yeah, I asked Tim Brando one time about him auditioning, and I got Tim for like 10 on my radio show. He spent eight of it talking about that, so it was like, I couldn't get to the other stuff I wanted to get to, like the game he was actually calling involving a Houston team

because he had spent so much time on the Will of Fortune and stuff. But yeah, he was definitely considered to replace for the nighttime version, because Pat Sayjack, we're getting the weeds here a little bit, Pat was going to go to CBS to do a show, a nighttime show, which eventually did and was a failure at it. But the, so Will of Fortune wouldn't let him do the NBC daytime version, so they were looking for

a daytime host. Okay. That job eventually went to a guy by the name of Rolf Bernershka. I have no idea who that is. He was a former kicker of the San Diego Chargers. Interesting. And he hosted it for like two years, panned universally as a terrible host. And then they eventually got rid of the daytime show.

It was only on a night. How can you necessarily be a terrible host at Wheel of Fortune? It's, hey, spend the wheel. Well, people have told me that Ryan Sechrist isn't doing a great job. I don't want to show. Yeah, I haven't watched it. I mean, you know, me and you got into discussion last week about network TV. I mean, that's even that.

If Jeopardy is on every once in a while, I would watch. But it's not like when Trebek was doing it. Yeah. All right. So we're going to get into the details of the game from yesterday throughout the course of the show. We've got to tell the truth also coming up, the news at noon. We've got some baseball news to get to as well. We'll get that.

But before we get to what went wrong in there, and everybody's been doing that already. You did it with your buddies at the house last night. You did it this morning on sports radio, hopefully with Sean. Amy Kronk-strunk. wearing an oiler's belt buckle. Of course. I don't know her. I've never spoken to her.

There's never going to be a need to speak to her because there's nothing Houston related that I need to speak to her about. And you're not supposed to hate somebody you don't know, but I hate her. And it's, Dan, I need a second here. Please. I thought I was past it when they wore the Oilers gear

and the Texans beat them last year. but it still pains me that she did nothing in her life to deserve what she has. And there is a phrase that is used for people that inherit things and don't deserve them. Yeah, Jim Harbaugh used it. I'm not going to say what it is. Born on third base? Okay. I kind of like that one.

Yeah, that's what he said about Ryan Day. He said, must be nice to be born on third base. I was thinking about Lucky something club, but that's... I'm going to refrain from saying that. Yeah. There's somebody that me and you both know used to use that quite a bit. And I was like, I really wish you'd stop using it.

It's kind of off-putting when you say it. Yeah, so I'm not going to say it. But she's braggadocious for all the wrong reasons. How this game meant so much to her. Now, granted, Hannah didn't do herself any favors by trying to poke that bear. And she probably is a bear. She might have back here. I don't know that for a fact.

I don't know that for a fact at all. Well, I mean, there's one host on our station who says she looks like a thumb. but please continue. It bothers me. And while again, I am not, I would not consider myself a Texans fan, I'm definitely a Texans observer. I have listeners that listen to this show

that love the Houston Texans, and for that I want them to be successful for you. I do carry the Texans flag, especially when they play the Titans, because everything about that organization drives me insane. From the taking the team from me, that was my team,

to changing the team, to changing the team, team name to going to the retro to having the Hall of Fame weekends where they bring all the older players to Nashville where no one in Nashville knows who they are. Sure. Everything about that organization drives me up the wall. I mean, I even think it goes even before that as well because, I mean, you took what was at one time the most beloved sports entity in this town. And towards the end, the man who was running the team at the time, her dad, Bud,

He made us hate the team so much that apathy completely set in. I mean, I remembered my dad took me to go see Dan Marino and the dolphins play against the Oilers in their final season at the dome. Probably to this day, I think there was more U of H fans at a U of H Baylor game when they were playing in the dome than there were at that game. Yeah. I'm just, I hate her. And that's a terrible thing to say. And so I should probably not say it. And I probably should just, it's in relative terms.

I don't think if you have like a blood curdling hate for her. If she was hurt on the side of the road, I would help her. Sure. If she needed a gas money, I would help her. I mean, maybe. Yeah, you're right. I'd probably just start a good public transportation. I mean, you know, there's somebody.

And by the way, too, it's funny you bring that up because she wouldn't be, you know, stuck on the side of the road. Because I actually thought about that the other night. Like, billionaires don't drive. Like, I don't want to drive and I'm not a billionaire. But I mean, like, for example, you know, Tillman was at the rocket. game on Friday night. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, there's no way Tillman like goes down to the garage, gets in a car, drives off. Like, he's getting into a car, but somebody else is in the driver's seat. Well, someday, that's my next goal, is to have someone drive me full time. To have a

driver. Yeah. It's a status. It is. Absolutely. All right. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-2-1-790. I was bullish on Willa of us. I'm not trying to brag about this because it's not, he's not, he's not had a good NFL career. But he did enough yesterday that probably if you're Tennessee Titan fan, you're thinking, all right, we should give this guy rest a chance of this season to prove whether or not he's a go-to guy. He was really good yesterday. Now, he did take a lot of sacks.

And as the TV broadcast said, he ran into a lot of those sacks. I would say more than half of them were caused by him. But he does throw a good football. And he did throw the terrible pick six. But he made the Texan secondary look bad yesterday. Really, really bad, especially the D-Bull. That didn't help. Not being able

has stopped Tony Pollard, especially too. I think, what was it? Second drive of the game right there, where you've got him hemmed up there in the backfield and somehow he bounces out of it and runs it for about 25, 30 yards. You're just like, it's going to be one of those days, huh? It was one of those days. This is, and help me out of Houston, do you think this is the case? I think yesterday's loss was worse than Jets loss. I really do. It's a thousand percent. Really, really, really do. All right, let's get into it. You guys are welcome. We're going to let you guys talk because Dan and I, we just like listening. We actually like you people.

We like everybody. Well, I shouldn't say this other guy doesn't like me. But, you know, I kind of like him. That's why you need to do my method of responses are limited to followers. And some people might say, oh, well, that's not facing the music. I don't care enough to face the music. Yeah, I guess you're right. I try to be nice to everybody, but the guy doesn't like me.

And that's fine. We'll get fast fast. All right, here we go. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. Who's wearing it more this week? Is it the offensive line? Is it C.J. Stroud?

Is it Bobby Sloick? Is it Tomiko Ryans? Is it the Texan secondary? This looks like to me that you shouldn't be making any late January plans for Texans playoff parties. They're just going to backdoor their way into the playoffs because the division is so bad. 713-212-5-7-90. With a word right now for the Shell Federal Credit Union, I would like for you to get an auto loan from the Shell Federal Credit Union, where you can get $250 in cash back. There are deferred payments.

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It's disappointing loss for us. We didn't do anything well enough to win this game. Out of all the positives that we did have, there were way too many negatives, right? Too many negative plays. We're score. We get a penalty. We get touchdowns called back.

get penalties on a special team. It's just way too many negative plays defensively, like unexplainable, right? Explosives for touchdowns. It just didn't play good across the board. And that starts with me. Obviously, you know, we weren't ready to go as a team, so that starts with me.

And it kind of wrapped it up for us, Sydney. I mean, there was nothing that he didn't say that didn't make complete sense. I mean, help me out. I mean, how do you lay an egg to Tennessee? I mean, I don't care about short week. I don't care about the fact that maybe you got caught up in the, it's a home game. Maybe you didn't respect Tennessee. Look, it wasn't a great weekend.

I mean, the Rockets destroyed the Blazers on Friday and then laid a hellaciously big egg against the Blazers on Saturday. I mean, it can happen. And that's why you can't ever assume anything. it comes to professional sports, these guys get paid and they're going to go out and try to make an example out of someone or try to prove naysayers wrong. And damn, Titans. The disrespect part of it, I think, is a huge thing of it because the coded language in the Texans locker room after the game was our energy was not good out of the gate because

that's exactly what it looked like. It looked like it was, especially even after that first score. I mean, you have the huge kickoff return. score the very first play that you run offensively. You're just thinking to yourself, man, this is going to be a rocking chair day. This is going to be fun. Right. Hell, Davis Mills is going to get into this game at some point.

I actually said that kind of jokingly about hopefully we see Davis Mills in a fourth quarter and it would not because it's somebody's hurt because it's mop-up duty. Right. And that's what I think they probably believed was going to be the case because look, I mean, you can say, oh, we respect our opponent. Oh, they're better than two and eight, all these different types of things. You hear it all the time. But human nature does take over.

And I guarantee you that that was the thought. We're at home. We don't lose at home. Well, you did to Detroit. And we're going to be able if we just play our brain of football. And that's, you know, look, there is something to playing relaxed. I get that because that's when, you know, if you force things that, you know, injuries can happen and that mistakes can happen on the field.

But then they found out pretty quickly, oh, we're in for a fight. Oh, we can't stop Tony Pollard. Oh, he's completing passes. Oh, they're stopping the run. Like all of these different types of things, and it just spiraled out of control, and they couldn't get control of this game. Anything else considered 20 yards or more is considered an explosive play. The Texans watch the Titans get four of them.

And two of, well, hell, look at these yards. 70, 63, 38, 27. I mean, ain't cheapies. I don't even know who Westbrook Akeekine is, but we found out who Westbrook Akeena is because he got behind the secondary. And then, I mean, you get the tight-in who catches the ball. and runs at the distance and it's just like the hell's going on here like what's going on i mean it's not only that it's also too an offensive line for tennessee that has improved but they're still bad and they showed you that yesterday oh yeah i mean how many sacks eight sacks right and they're pushing you off

the ball and running the football the way that they are right and on the other side of it as well where this defense has been the bright spot of this team and you completely allow yourself to get gashed I mean, that's the thing, and I know we're going to get into Slowick a little bit later on, so I'll save some of it for later. But that's why when they got down inside the red zone for the final fair barren field goal, where that second down, he runs the ball. And I'm just like, you just wasted a play. Like, you know you're not going to break the cement today.

Like, it's not happening. Yeah. Like, why are you continuously banging your head against a wall thinking, oh, hey, well, eventually this wall will fall. Hey, I got news for you. It didn't. and it wasn't going to. This is, and this, and look, they scored a touchdown last Monday in the second half.

But that was almost like that, that to me felt like we got to do this so we can get people off our back. No, that's 100% what it was. And yesterday, they weren't even close. They absolutely would have gone for it on fourth down last Monday night had they not scored that touchdown. Right, right. Because they can try to say, oh, well, you know, things are, you know, there's nothing different from the first to the second half. No, clearly it is. Like, I mean, once it happens, all right, fine.

Twice, maybe a coincidence. And then what's the saying? Three times it's a pattern. This is like five out of six times now. Like, stop going to the podium and saying there's nothing different from the first half to the second half. You're insulting us. You're insulting yourself when you say things like that because it shows to me that two things are happening here. Either A, you don't know what you're looking at or B, you don't know how to fix it.

Or how about this? Are you telling me, and here's the thing that we don't have an end. answer to. Every single week during this rut of the second half doldrums is every other team going into the locker room and making adjustments defensively that the Texans can't

make their own adjustments on the offensive side? That's just the thing. We're seeing CJ Stroud play the way right now that we feared he was going to play last year. We thought that oh man, this offensive line, especially now Kenyon Green's out, you've got injuries, you're having to try to piecemeal this thing together and you're putting a rookie quarterback behind this, that's not going to be good.

Yeah. And then you had a silly, two men in motion at the same time yesterday. You had the obligatory Larry Tunsell false start. You had holds. That's why I put the tweet out yesterday. I said, look, and everyone, you know, and the Texan truthers who just can't possibly think anything's wrong, go are like, well, how do you, nobody knows what was out there. If you were going after offensive line. So you're telling me that there wasn't a single offensive line that could have helped. A 32-te- Now, Gray, you're not going to trade within your own division. You're not telling me there's a single offensive lineman that could have not helped with the depth of this football team.

I choose not to believe that. Now, you can say I'm wrong and I'm okay with that. But I'm telling you this, the receiving core, the secondary were two things you could have absolutely infixed at the deadline and you did nothing. Well, okay, that's fine. But I'll flip it back to you with this. Do you trust that Nick Casario could be able to find that? Because look at what he's brought in on this offensive line. I'm starting to think that Nick has a blind spot for offensive line play.

But how do you do that? So you're telling me his eyes are really good at Will Anderson and really good at fifth round safeties or second round corners, but he all of a sudden can't judge an offensive line. Why do you think certain teams just can never find a quarterback? Okay. So that's the question. The Texas is an organization have a blind spot when evaluating their offensive line.

Clearly. It's one of the five worst offensive lines in the NFL. But let's just take the inventory here. So Tunsel and Howard were both before him, right? Was Shaq Mason him? I believe he was, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Shaq was like he was, I mean, I hope his neck's okay. So there you go.

I mean, Patterson, Scruggs, maybe the book is out on them. But the guy that you had here and you let walk this off season, George Fant, I mean, that was a nice find, but obviously you didn't value him enough to keep him. So that's one. and Kenyon Green as well, who I understand injuries are a thing, but injuries are a part of your development. You being on the field as part of the judgment

and the evaluation of how good of a player you are. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-21-2-5-7-90. I don't know this late in the year, honestly, if things can be turned around. I just, I don't know. This is who they have been for basically, what, eight weeks now? I mean, give their most complete victory of the year.

I'm not counting New England. because New England's terrible. It's Buffalo. And that felt like a million moons ago. Well, a million moons ago, but it was also to another game that you didn't score in the second half. And you also probably played that game closer than it needed to be played. 1030, Sports Talk, 790. You guys get in.

Dan and I ever said enough. Want to hear from you folks. 713-212-5-790. You poor Aggies, I'm sorry what happened to you Saturday night, too. Oh, my God. Feels so bad for Kamari Daniels. Oh, my gosh. What an awful way for that bad boy to end.

and my Cougars, we're having problems scoring, frankly, in all four quarters, not just the second half, but that's a different issue for different time. Yeah, what does Brian McTaggart feel about the Cougars' offense? You can call them, you guys number. 7-1-3-212-5-7-0. Texan-Dade. Back to Battle Red Ross

and Liberty white-ass Matt Thomas. What up? What up? That is what I am. Real pale Texans talk continues on the Matt Thomas show. What up? All right. If you went to the Texas game yesterday, I saw some of many people on social media were chirping about this. Did Joe Mix and get sideways with some fans yesterday? I didn't see that. Yeah, there were some people on Twitter. If anybody knows what that is, if it's not true, then please debunk it, because Lord knows Twitter can be certainly incorrect with things. But I saw it more than one person.

So is it like basically the same as, hey, you suck to? Go the blank home. Mother bleeper. Yeah. From what I was gathering was that he turned around. It was some fans, you know, not far from where they are on the sideline. Right. They were saying how much they were displeased with the current performance. Right.

I don't think Darling would do such a thing, but that's a different issue. Well, of course not. Texans Ultimate Warrior, definitely not either. Yeah. Yeah. The guy that wears the Lord Farquhar crown. I'm like, what? Like, dude.

But you know what, though, as we say that, we kind of joke about that. Every team's got those. Every single team does. I get it. But it's like also, too, like, I love people who are passionate about their team. I really do. But the whole super fan thing,

like the Jets guy that leads the JETS, Jets, Jets, Jets, Jets, Jets. There was a whole story in the New York Post about him saying, oh, they're phasing me out. Because you're not the attraction, dude. Like, you're kind of part of it all because you've kind of been baked into it now. Yeah. But nobody cares. Like, they're there to see Aaron Rogers and the team.

They're not there to see you. Yeah. And it's funny. Again, there were people again saying, you got to get your seats early, you got to be there. Look, we have a lot of wonderful things in our community. We have generally speaking, very friendly, nice people. Generally speaking, amazing food.

Terrific amounts of culture. Generally speaking, amazing food. Okay. Yeah, take the generally speaking. Let me take that. Generally speaking nice people. Yes. Except on X.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing food. Plenty to do in terms of shopping, arts, beach, whatever case. we're just not going to get to the stadium on time and you can be a dead horse on this over and over and over again I don't believe in animal cruelty here but Rockets games

What is it care? What are you? That's right. Rockets games are late attended. Texans games have always been the case. We're just not a community. We value the tailgate and so I put that on Twitter. They're like members of the media are like going get in your seats, be there on time.

You know what? I'm the customer. I'll get that when I damn well want to. It was a little bit of kind of, you know, in college where if a team, say, is playing leading in the Thanksgiving break, I don't know, UMass or Tennessee Martin, where the students might show they might not sparsely attended by their standards. Yeah. And it was that a little bit at the beginning of the game. Because I think that probably there were a lot of people out in the parking lot.

They're like, I'll get in there. It's the Titans. That's exactly right. And by the way, it's a beautiful morning. It was. cooked this beautiful brisket or I've made this amazing queso or I've cooked these wings or pigs in a blank and I'm going to enjoy them. So I'm just telling you, I want you to be in your seats at Rockets games at Tip Time. I want you to be at their Astros games at first pitch. I would like for you to be in

your seats at Texans games, but it's not, it's just not who we are. And that takes us down a notch when it comes to ultimate fandom, but it doesn't make you a bad fan. It just makes you what you want to do. And I'm tired of people telling me what I need to do and not do. So this sports caster is not going to tell you when to get to your seat. It's a convenient excuse. I mean, like, I'm sure that probably there will be people, well, you know, the energy in the building sucked. That had nothing to do with us on the field. The place was 60% full and it was 7-0. Now you did. Now here's the thing. You don't get in your seats on time. You missed a great kickoff return by Damien Pearson one player on our touchdown. So that's on you. Well, I mean, with the

beauty of technology now where you can basically take in the game from anywhere. I'm sure there's probably people out in the parking lot saying, you know, let's have another beer. Then we'll head in. You see that. Oh, hey, that was cool. Oh, man, that's really cool. All right, hey, let's have another beer.

We got time. This game's not going anywhere. I mean, I can just get on my pulpit and say, you got to be there. I'm not telling people what to do. Now, I did talk about this a little bit on the Saturday show with the Rockets game on Friday night. And I get it. It's the Blazers. And the opponent has a lot to do with it because that's the other thing as well.

was what's the rush to get there? They're playing the Blazers. Like, they're going to handle them. But at the same time, though, too, I would like to see a little bit more energy inside Toyota Center because this is a fun, exciting team. Like, why would you not want to be there and be able to get the most out of watching this team play?

I don't disagree. I've raised the flag. I just, I've done all I can say, do all I want to do. We're only one voice to try to get, it's just, we're just not that's not who we are. We're not Chicago or not New York. We are not Dallas. But even those places have half-empty buildings.

Like everybody, see, that's the thing. Like New York. Like, everybody tries to, oh, Yankee fans, they're the greatest. Go watch a Yankee game on a Wednesday night. That stadium is half full. Like, I mean, it's everywhere. Because that's the part of it as well that, like, one of my biggest pet peeves is spending other people's money.

It's incredibly expensive just to buy the tickets. Then you get in there and say, you've got your two kids. You got your wife with you. I mean, everybody wants a hot dog. Everybody wants a soda. Maybe even you buy somebody a hat. Like, you're getting out there with hundreds and hundreds of dollars spent. Like, that's an investment all in itself.

And if the team is pedestrian at best or just sucks, why are you spending that money? Your money is well spent other places. Wes and humble on 790. Good morning. Matt, how you doing, my friend? Wes, how are you? Long time, no talk. What's going on?

Hey, man. You know me. I'm not a chicken little guy. I'm a pattern guy. And over the past six, seven guys, six, seven weeks, there's been three patterns. One, Bobby Sloke's got to go, his play calling is horrible. In the Jets game, the second half, I can't tell you how many times there were 10 guys in the box with only a safety playing deep. And we still couldn't move the ball.

Our secondary continues to get gassed. Week in, week out, it's getting worse. And I text you this yesterday. C.J. Shrott has four touchdowns, the whole year. year in the second half. Our defense has two. So either the play calling is the biggest issue or CJ forgets how to play. And I think that might be part of it though because he does not, I don't see him calling very many audibles at the line. And the announcers made a connection when they're trying to run the ball to the strongest side of the Tennessee defensive line.

And the announcer was going, why don't you run it inside there? You're not going to bust it to the outside against that guy. Yeah. And so they're even seeing it. And if you're the quarterback and you're OC, you need two yards or three yards, and he's calling an off tackle to the cement wall

side of the Tennessee defensive line, why aren't you calling it audible? And that might be its youth, right? He's a sophomore quarterback in the NFL, but, man, patterns tell you everything and this, the play calling.

I know we worship Sloick last year. and everyone was afraid that he was going to go as a head coach. I'm telling you now, I don't think his head coaching opportunities are going to be there this year. So what do we do? Well, I can't speak to this because I've, you know, look, I've never been involved in coaching before my life. So your opinion, anybody's opinion listening to us right now is going to be just as valid as what I could possibly say. I don't have any inside intelligence. I only have to go on, Dan, if somebody was chirping, hey, what are we doing?

here. And if there were real big issues with Sloics play calling, somebody would whisper something to somebody, meaning other members of the media. Sure. Now, are the Texans just really good at keeping it tight-lipped about their dissatisfaction? That could very well be the case.

But I don't know, and we brought this up before the Detroit game, or after the Detroit game. How does a offense in a flow just everything's moving down the football field, first play out of that long return touchdown. How does CJ and the entire offense just look like they're going to score 45 points?

And then all of a sudden out of the gate, it's like Rush Limbaugh has drawn the play's up. I don't know what it is. I don't. And I'm sorry, folks, I don't have an answer. But the end result is you have to have results or you make changes. And I don't know when they're going to make these changes. I don't know if slow is going to be the fall guy. If somebody else has to be the fall guy.

But the reality is, here's what I do know. The offensive line is worse than last year. CJ is not as good as he was last year. And the fact of the matter is, there have been some very peculiar, strange play calls when you're trying to put a foot on a team's throat and you've been unable to be successful when you've tried to do that. Well, it's again, I mean, it's the two scenarios I laid out.

I have no choice right now but to think he either, A, doesn't know what he's seeing or B, doesn't know how to fix it. And I mean, it's again, it goes back to every single week that Bobby Sloick addresses the media. You ask him a question along those lines. And it's, well, really, there's nothing that changes from, you know, the first to second half. It's about execution. Clearly there is, man. And like, if you can't find the way to fix it, and don't tell me that there's not somebody in there that's breaking down film, that's trying to diagnose, hey, how are we getting beat?

Why are we getting beat? All of these different types of things that it hasn't come up, that somebody hasn't come forward with a solution. Hey Bobby, you know, they've been doing this to us. Like, maybe we try to figure out a way to offset that. Like, any of those things that's happening in that building, I can't believe that that's not happening. Because how many people do you have that are analysts that are coaching interns, anything that's behind the scenes that are breaking down film ad nauseum and they're continuing to say, oh, I don't know. I mean, if that's the case, then you have the wrong people in your building. Like, stop trying to lecture everybody about how, oh, well, you don't know the play call.

You don't know how things break down all these different types of things. No, clearly you don't and you're deflecting it on us. 713-212-5-790. Terrence, Eric, Tony, we'll get to you guys. If you want to follow up the conversation, I wish I had an answer for you. I just don't. I don't know enough about football coaching to be able to say, Bobby, what are you doing? I just look at the results.

And the results are this is a team that has for basically two months, been completely anemic offensively in the second half. Your trusted local source for reliable appliance repair is Uptown Appliance Repair. 281-758-9978. 281-58-9-9-78. If your ice maker is not producing, if your microwave's on the fritz, if you've got a washer dry that's not working, if you've got a barbecue grill that's not performing, if your sub-zero refrigerator is not cooling properly, you call 281-758-9978.

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I mean, not touching a single human being for about five seconds, if not for Joe Mixing on a Blitz pickup, you'd have to use a spatula to pick up C.J. Strad off the field at Energy Stadium. Believe it's our good buddy, Greg Toey, calling it the helicopter snap. It's not the Rosencopter, but, boy, it did not look good. That's the other part of it as well. It's players who should know better who are continuously making these same mistakes. It's mental at this point.

And I truly believe this. that CJ's hesitation to trust his offensive line is at least half of the problems of what he's having this year. I mean, if not even more. Look, I understand. Don't ever dog those guys out because, I mean, they're everything to you and they need to be everything to you. But, I mean, it's also too at the same time.

I mean, at least if nothing else, can we get an Aaron Wilson report or something that, hey, CJ's called these guys out, like behind closed doors. It's been like, hey, this has to get fixed, and you guys need to find a way to fix it. However, I can help you, I will, but facts are facts, and the job's not getting done. See, I think to me, and again, these are novice eyes watching this. I think this team's offensive futility can be directly related to the fact that there is massive line issues, usually week after week after week, especially in the passing game. and to a smaller extent in the running game. Sometimes Joe Mixon looks like he's going to be able to have 150 yards,

a case in point the cowboy game, and there are some nights where he just can't get past a line of scrimmage like yesterday. Well, I mean, it's also too. I mean, it again comes back to Slowick, where, you know, I've talked about, you know, just my annoyance with the gimmicks. And we even saw a few of them yesterday. But here's the other one as well.

And without having the stats in front of me, what did we hear about Joe Mixon all throughout the offseason? He's fantastic catching the ball of the backfield. How many times has Joe Mixon caught the football of the backfield this year? Like when your run game's not working, but you also know that, hey, he's a guy. We get him out in space. He can make things happen with the football. Like, how does that not enter into your brain right there of, hey, let's try this?

Yeah. Let's go to Terrence on 790 and 1054. Hi, Terrence. Hey, how you doing, man? Good. I got one question. Who is the offensive line coach? Offensive line coach?

Yes. What? Do you know him at all or no? No, I don't know him, but he needs to have his guys ready for the game. Well, I wish it was just his fault. Do they ever practice? What's that? I said, do they have the offensive line ever practice?

They do practice every day. And it's Chris Strasser as the offensive line coach. Which if you had a room of people and said Chris Dosser, what's the name, Chris what? Chris Strasser. Chris Drosser. He's nobody would know who he was. He's in his second year on the offensive line. Yeah, I know, but he don't never have a guy out of ready to play.

Every Sunday, they're doing the same old thing. Well, I mean, somebody's... We were just talking about Titus Howard. Thanks, Terrence. Yeah, we were just talking about Titus Howard. The whole thing. Lemery Tunsel, Juice Scruggs, Patters, I mean, they're just a bunch of guys. And it's also, too, a tonsil.

He wears it because a lot of it's. brought on himself. I mean, he dodges the media. The most offensive line penalties in the league, right? There you go. I mean, it's not being ready for training camp after what people perceived to be a minor knee operation. Skipping practices. There you go. Like, you can skip the practices for veteran rest days when you know, hey, we can count on that guy. Like, when I was in Atlanta, Julio Jones would barely ever practice. But when he was in his prime, you knew who Julio Jones was. You knew that it's like, all right, you can't coach that. You can't practice that. You either are that or you're not. And if you're going to be that guy, then okay, you better show up on game days and you better perform. And he hasn't done that well enough. Real quick before the top of the hour. Hi, Tony. You're on 790. Thank you for holding. Hey, thank you for taking my call.

I hear your comments today. I've heard all these radio comments from previous things and everything. And it boils down to one. thing, and that's discipline. There is no discipline. These guys get paid millions of dollars, and they're not doing their job. They're just collecting paychecks. You know, I love Domeca Ryan. I want him to be successful.

But early in the year, in the Indianapolis game, into the second quarter coming down, they should have kicked the field goal. Instead they were playing around doing something. Guess what? They almost lost the game. by less than three points.

You go back to Dalton Schultz, one play standing at the end of the line. Guy comes in uncontested and sacks C.J. Stroudt. Shultz looks around like, oh, where did he come from? You're the only guy out there with him. You didn't notice him.

You know, in Tunsel, with all his, you know, with his, you know, penalties. It comes down to Minel. And, you know, maybe that is what's, you know, getting to stroud now. But, I mean, it's the same thing. Who had the, I think it was last game that we lost, had a penalty, late hit, and it gave them the first down, and they went in and scored a touchdown.

I believe that guy had multiple interceptions in the game, too, and everybody's, oh, look, how many interceptions. Well, guess what? those interceptions will nullified with that one penalty that he screwed the whole, you know, team with that stupid penalty. Yeah. And then number zero, hitting the guy out of bounds with the stupid, you know, unnecessary roughness. Well, the thing of it is, it goes down to discipline. I know.

Yeah. And here's the thing. You're going to get those over the course of a season. You're going to get late hits. You're going to get guys out of bounds. You got to minimize those. You can't, those can't be a weekly occurrence. Here's what weekly occurrences have been.

Early in the season, Dan, it was illegal formations. Then it was holds. Then it was, and then now yesterday we added a new one, two men in motion on the same play. I mean, we're too late in the season for that to be happening. It's week one stuff. It's training camp stuff. Like it's things that you work on of saying, all right, hey, wait a snap right here. And then, all right, then we snap the ball.

I mean, I believe CJ, when he says that's on him, okay, well, fine. Then have enough patience to then be able to let those guys get set and then run the play. I mean, honestly, everything has taken a step back this year, especially on the offensive side of things. And frankly, the defense is now certainly a gas on long place. Four explosive plays

of at least 20 yards yesterday. Second hour, Matt Thomas show with Ross. Danny's filling in today for Ross, who is, I believe, in Uruguay today. So hopefully he's doing well there. Oh, good for him. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-2-5-7-9. I need to tell the truth is coming up. Boys, I have four

sports takes. I believe three of them. You have to find the one that I don't believe. This is the week, Connor. This is the week we, one of us gets it right. All right. 713-212-5-790. Tonight, you've got Cincinnati and the L.A. Chargers. You're going to want to watch that game because we got some playoff implications,

especially if the Chargers make it. And they could be a Texan opponent in the first round. You never know. But you also want to make some money because you're going to be sitting now watching these games. So why don't you do both? Enjoy the football. Enjoy the stats. Enjoy making money with underdog fantasy.

Tomorrow night, rockets are in action in Minnesota. That's another good game. Take multiple sports, whether it's passing yards, baskets, assist, touchdowns, rushing yards, and make cash based off of the numbers that Underdog Fantasy gives you and say, no, it's going to be higher than that. Or no, it's going to be lower than that. You've got profit boosters. You've got an opportunity for a free pick.

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Must be 18 plus in present estate where Underdog Fantasy operates. Terms apply, concern with your play, call 1-800 gambler or visit www.ncgambling.org. Remember, you can win up to 1,000 times your money by choosing higher, lower, on player stats. It's just that easy with Underdog Fantasy. but you got to use that promo code, SportsMT. Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. 114 Sports Talk, 790.

Matt, Dan is in for Ross, who is in Venezuela. Connor McGovern is in as well. 713-212-5-790. Connor's not in Venezuela. He's right there. No, Connor's here. Oh, okay. You know, I didn't do my prepositional phrasing properly.

I'm sorry about that. No, it's fine. It's syntax there. I mean, I was going to say, if Connor was in both places at once, to be incredibly impressive. I got you. All right.

To tell the truth coming up at the bottom of the hour, we got the news at noon which you'll handle and then at 1.50, I am pushing, believe it or not,

to you and Gordy, and I promise, I'm not going to be able to hear it, although I'll be on the plane. Maybe I'll put the old I heart radio app on and see how you guys do on that. I was going to say,

I mean, do they have an ox cord on the plane? You can't plug it in. I'm going to put the headphones on, yeah. Okay. But yeah, I'll be leaving for Minneapolis for the final hour

the show, so Gordy's going to step in And then you and me will be tomorrow from Minneapolis. And then Wednesday we got a full show with Gordy. And then we're off for Thursday and Friday. It's a busy week for me. I'm going to be tomorrow, Minneapolis, Wednesday in Philadelphia, home for Thanksgiving, Thursday, and Friday. I go to Provo to go over the Cougars and the Cougars, Houston and BYU, where Joseph Torto for the Chronicle says game time temperature is for that game Saturday night, which is going to be at 9.15 central time, 8.15 of the mountain time, which should be in the upper 20s.

No coffee either, you know, so that. That's actually a great, that's, yeah, I forgot about that. And Adam Wexer is filling in for our silent reporter and Jeremy, and I said, you know, I volunteered Wex to do sidelines because I knew it would be cold. So I'm going, he's going to the sidelines. So, I mean, you know, you get basketball in Vegas and then Wex gets Provo on the sidelines. That's a good trade. Well, I'll be with him in Provo, but I'll just be in the booth. I got to help out of it.

sure you guys have to have the booth open. Oh, no, no, no. Really? No, no. Are you kidding me? Why don't I want 24 degree temperatures in the booth? Every booth that I've ever been a part of. And, you know, I wasn't on the trip when they went to Lambo, but the team that I was around, they were up there

and I asked my buddy who was on the sidelines for that. I go, hey, like, they kept the booth closed, right? He's like, no. West and Dave like to have the windows open. West and Dave are the Atlanta Falcons. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. One baseball note, before we go back to the Texans phone call, 713212-5-790.

7-1-3-2-5-7-9. You guys have been really good on the phone so far. So please keep it going. I always say, guys, ladies, too. 7-1-3-21-2-5-7-90. You say Kikuchi is now a Los Angeles angel of Anaheim. Well. You say.

No longer. Now it's going to be there at the halos. But now somebody brought up earlier today that now he's going to give the secrets to the angels. Let me tell you what sport, quote-unquote, secrets it really does not matter, it's baseball. Yeah, I mean, intelligent reports are all over the place. You say it's not going to go walk.

You say, not going to walk in there and say, here's what Altuvaa likes. I have a pretty good feeling that the angels have a really good idea of what Jose Altuva likes to swing in. They've got video in Anaheim. They can see that for themselves. They also play against each other enough that they can know,

hey, this guy is susceptible to this. Hey, you know, maybe you throw that guy this. He'll chase it. Yeah. They have all those things. But 21 million per, three years for Usaic Kikuchi, $63 million. There was no planet. Sorry, Lisa.

There was no planet that the Astros were going to pay him much more than what he was making, which I think was like 14, 15, something like that. He was really good for this baseball team. You say was way better than anybody thought he was going to be. But the problem is, that's crazy, crazy. what are the angels going to learn to be fiscally responsible spenders? That's way of a market value for you said.

That hasn't even been their problem. Their problem has been being able to actually build a sustainable roster. That's been what the issue has been. It's not been about them throwing around money, which they do irresponsibly. Rendon and before that pool holes, they gave Mike Trot the whole late. Now granted, the Mike Trot contract was warranted because he was amazing. He just had not been able to stay healthy. And that's...

But it's been Rendon's same situation. That's case and point. But I mean, it's also, though, too, Look at the teams that win in October. They're teams that win with, oh, hey, that guy was in their organization. Oh, that guy was in their organization. Oh, that guy. I mean, you get my point here. You can bring up all of these players and, you know, think to yourself,

oh, well, they're going to be great at the major league level because they were fantastic, you know, prospects down at the Meyer League level. How good were you developing? How good were you being able to self-scouts to know that those guys were going to be good? And they just have not been able to do that, at least sustainably. All right. So now what we do, now that you say is gone, we have to, we're going to be spending a lot of time looking at Joey Lopofito, right? I mean, if he becomes a start now, Grant, you had to give up something to get something.

You wanted Kukuchi, you had to make a move. Well, it's not only him. I mean, it's also, too, it's Jake Bloss. It's Will Wagner. What happens with those guys? I mean, especially, too. If Alex Bregman leaves, people are going to be looking at Will Wagner, hey, how good is he for the Blue Jays this year? I mean, I know he had a couple of decent games for them last year.

Yeah, yeah. Sure. But, I mean, it was also, too, if everybody you talked with saying how blocked he was. He can't play second base. He couldn't play third for the time. So, again, I don't think anybody in the Astros organization positioned him as a third basement long term. I would think not. But, you know, there have been second baseman that I converted the third.

So it would only take a really an off-season. There's been short stops who have. I mean, for the last seven years plus that you had a guy who played shortstop that played third base. Well, I didn't watch much of the Eagles Rams game yesterday. I'm looking at the headline. Sequin Barclay ran for 255. There's people that are saying he's an MVP candidate. We have a Giants fan, Alex Middleton, who works on the Rod Ryan Morning Show,

that's got to be probably just drinking massive amounts of, I don't know, bleach today after saying that. Yeah, I was going to say, he's beside himself past the gravy pod. I know he does, so check out his work there. I've been a guest on that before, yeah. Oh, have you? Yeah. See, I, you know, I'm one of those. that like I'm asked

I don't ask like do you have that pet peeve of people like if you're at like Super Bowl Radio Row hey if you know if you need me on your show I can jump on your show see you're breaking the rule already you're inviting yourself to the party I'll invite you to the party not the other way around Ross and I were in Vegas

with the folks at the circuit when they did that big promotion and this fantasy guy comes over and starts just running through all these statutes about the Texans I mean he is just you know they go on a soft shell they go in a two deep they go Tampa 2 when they run run zone and they all this I was like this is really interesting but I'm looking to drink and have my third long island ice tea in 45 minutes would you leave me alone I didn't say that but I was thinking it he was Jones in to try to get a weekly radio spot I'm like we're we're dr. Roto 24-7 yeah step off buddy you're you're not stepping in here and taking away somebody else's spot that's that's not going to happen

God, Sequin, 255. My God. I said it last night on Twitter. He's finally now the player that people thought he was going to be coming out of Penn State. And he did show it at times with the Giants, but not like this. Philadelphia v. Detroit, who wins? Because I think Philadelphia's the second best team in the NFC. I agree with that. I got Detroit right now. You could go to the Philadelphia's been there done that card. Just darn it out there.

So is Detroit, too. I mean, they just Philadelphia's. if you got a step further than they do. 713-212-5-7-90. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Eric on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Eric, good morning. Thank you for holding. Good morning.

You bet. Hey, I was disappointed in the Rockets on Saturday night. Me too. I was disgusted. Yes, sir. It's terrible. I mean, especially after we lit them up on Friday night, that's just the game we got to win at home.

I was disgusted with the Texans on Sunday. I think everybody was. But I'm even more let down that you and Ross have not mentioned the fact that Zach Grinky pitched deeper into the playoffs than any Astros pitch. Oh, my God. I thought we banished you for a while. What happened? I thought you were in a way.

I gave you a break. But, you know, Zach Grinky threw out the first pitch of game four, the ALD. So he technically pitched deeper into the playoffs than he has those pitch. Oh, you're so wrong. What is it wrong with you? Come on. You know what it is? You know what it is?

It's that air you breathe in Bay City. I mean, I'm sure there are lovely people down there. Let me give you one. more. It's my dream next season to see Zach Grinky get his 3,000 career strikeout in the refurbished Astrodome. You hate the idea of so much. There you go. You know what? You have absolutely checked all the boxes, my man. Eric is diehard Granky guy. I mean, you know. Let me tell you, the next pitch that Eric that Zach Granky throws will be in a beer league softball game. If even that. Grinky just seems like he's a guy that's going to like kind of like Mike Scott

just go completely off the radar. He's got plenty of money to do so. I was going to say maybe he shows up somewhere and maybe you know you just are at a random place and you're like hey aren't you Zach Rankie I used to be what do you say that I don't think he would I think he's got he's got a sly little wit to him you just don't see it very often I so there you go I think he probably would or maybe he would just stare at you and wouldn't say anything because he seems like he's got that in him too um but to eric's point though I have a recurring dream that the astros go back and play a game a year at the astrodome well hopefully that'll never happen I don't think it ever will but I'm just saying that, you know, it happens.

And I'm kind of like, oh, man, you know, wouldn't that be fun? But no, you left it for a reason. Leave it in the past. Thank God. At least they're talking about starting to demolish it. Not starting to. They're thinking about a plan to put into place to demolish it. Demolish it and go mixed-use development.

Yeah. Go apartments. Go hotels. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Shops. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, until you do it.

And then people realize, hey, this is pretty cool. We just talked about it two weeks ago. The Astronomercy, that's what they want to do. No, I don't want any of that stuff with it. I want parking lots. I want to park. And I want garages to put people to park so people can get in out of there in a reasonable amount of time. Why not bring back Asterold?

No, those people aren't taking people to parks anymore. No amusement parks? Nobody likes roller coasters? Oh, I didn't say that. I'm just, there was a reason why I got the story to begin with. Because nobody was going anymore? Nobody was going anymore. That sucks.

It's, you know, unfortunately, I don't mean to paint with a broad brush, but it's, we're not as a safe society like we were when I was growing up. When I was 13 years old, my mom would drop me off of my buddies at AsteroWorld. We'd walk across the bridge. We'd play all day and have a good time. And we'd leave. And didn't have to worry about a variety of things happening. I mean, of course, it was crying back then too, but it just, I don't know, I don't feel, as a father myself, I don't feel safe taking my, letting my daughter run around areas that I did when I did. I was a kid.

That's fair. I just think crime is, it's a bigger part of life today, unfortunately. Well, it's also, too. I mean, you ride a roller coaster once. You've rode it enough. So then you're kind of like, all right. But, I mean, same time, I mean, how many times did I get on the cyclone? And I couldn't wait to get back on the cycle.

Oh, I miss a moment. I do, I'm now I'm done with roller coasters because I went to Cleveland and nearly died a hundred times over, but that's a different issue. Last roller coaster I rode was 2018 and it was the New York, New York one. Yeah. If you are a roller coaster fan, go to Cleveland. I forgot what it's called, but it's 15 of the most dangerous, exciting, thrilling roller coasters you'd ever been in your entire life. Every single one of them will make you blank your pants. Well, it's like those videos you see of people like climbing up, you know, the needles on top of tall buildings.

I'm like, why? Like, I don't need that. I have zero desire ever in life to say, Hey, you know, those two tall spires at the top of the Sears Tower or whatever they call it now. Yeah, I want to climb up to one of those. I think they call it Cedar Point, I think. I don't even want to go in like the little box that's there with the glass bottom floor. I have zero desire to do that. 713-212-5-790. We're getting whaling and bricks.

We've got to be tightened up. I'm even, I feel like I'm being Ross today. Let me tell you about the folks at Gamedaymen'shealth.com slash Houston. Gameday, men's health.com slash Houston. You need testosterone replacement. You're like, Matt, how do you know that? I don't.

Why don't you go find out your T levels first and see if you do need a little boost because you're not sleeping very well. You're cranky. Libito is minimal or been reduced. You can't work out like you used to. Get TRT replacement and you're going to be able to get a free vitamin shot from the great folks at gameday, men's health.com.

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More Matt Thomas now on Sports Talk 790. Let's get back on the phones. We've got to stay on clock here. We've got to tell the truth coming up with bomb mail. And Sky Mike Traffic Report of segments here. That is so inside baseball, knowing what you're talking about. Dude, they listen during the breaks.

I think they know. Brian and Sugarland 1121 on 7.90. Hello, Ryan. Hey, guys. Hi. I've been watching Houston football since about 1978 now. So, you know, taking out the six years

that we didn't have a team that's, you know, plus or minus 40 years. And yesterday, watching our teams for that long, I'm used to disappointing. being disappointed. But yesterday was an absolute travesty, and people need to be held accountable. The offensive line coach needs to be fired.

The offensive coordinator, slowet, needs to be fired. And I got to tell you, Nick Casario needs to be freaking called out, too, because I cannot believe the garbage guards we continue to trot out after their week after freaking week. And this team is so disappointing. I'm just upset. that. That's all I got to say. Ryan, let me tell you. First of all, thank you for calling the show. I hear it in your voice and I try to do this show for folks just like yourself. That right there, Dan Matthews, was a frustrated, lifelong Houston sports fan he said since 1978 and he is just

over it. And that's why I can't get, I'm not going to be Liberty White Matt. I can't. I mean, I mean, I'm a liberty white ass, Matt, but I can't be Liberty White, Matt. It's just, it's football in this town. We've had the rug pulled out from underneath us way too many times. I mean, how many times with the Oilers did we think, hey, we're going up to Buffalo. Things are going to go good. First half, hey, things are really good in Buffalo. This is going to be awesome.

Then you have an epic collapse in the second half and you don't win. The Chiefs. But I mean, every, let me tell you. Blue days. Every city has those issues. Every city has those issues. It's just, but we don't care about the other cities. We care about ours.

But it's also, though, too. And granted, you were here when the Astros were making their way towards winning their first world title, that there was still a little bit of angst with that. There was a little bit of, am I ever going to see this happen? Like, I'll never forget 2005 for as long as I live. Of all of the great things of being an Astros fan, finally being able to win and get into the NLCS, I was like, holy crap, we can do that. Yeah.

Like, we actually can do that here. And that's what the Texans are still searching for. They're still searching for being able to get past the division. round and get into the AFC championship, which they have not been able to do. And that's, I think, like, a huge part of all of this because we all bought into it. Everybody else nationally bought

into it. This is a team that has a real chance to win the Super Bowl. How much of this is... This team right now does not look like they have a chance to win a Super Bowl. How much of this is, and this is where you get the pie chart out? How much of this is tougher schedule from a year ago? We talked about that the moment the schedule got released. And we were warned, too.

You know, he brought up Nick Casario. Nick Casario warned us about that. how much of this is they started read their press clippings I've heard a few people on the radio shows say you know CJ needs to spend so much time running around the world and going on podcasts and focusing you know what you'll let people be who they are

these guys are not characters in a video game they're actual human beings and when people are interested in you and people want to talk to you go ahead and do it it has nothing to do with what's happening on the field it's a convenient excuse you can't be on a practice field 12 months a year. Your body has to rest. You've got to have downtime. So I'm not necessarily... Or you could be JJ Watt and then you break down in your career because you work out too much.

Yeah. I think there was a... To me, if you were to put this in a nutshell, massive miscalculation of the talent level on the offensive line, the inability to try to fix it, even if you couldn't. A serious kicking of the tires of the trade deadline would have been cool. But we played the soundbite from Casario multiple times of the last few weeks. Much to do about nothing?

He was much to do about nothing and just guys moving players around. I don't know. The Chiefs wanted a better receiver. They went and got DeAndre Hopkins. We saw teams all over the place get better. The Ravens going to get Devanté Johnson. And the argument. Deonté Johnson, excuse me.

And the people that are arguing, well, you don't know what the offensive line was out there. You don't, you're right. I don't know. But I know that you're telling me, if you're getting, again, if you want to tell me there were 28 football teams that weren't offering a linemen to come help this team, then I'll apologize and say I'm wrong. But I do not believe that. Nick Casar, if he wanted to go get a lineman,

could have not found something, somebody somewhere for a mid-round draft. And that's again, you know, I was talking about it earlier of, okay, if Bobby can't fix it or he doesn't know what he's looking at, then is there somebody in that building that does? Because I know that Bill Lasers there. He's coached a ton of football in this league. Gerard Johnson is there, and he's talked about it too. All the coaches have a hand in the game plan,

all these different types of things. Wouldn't you think that one person would finally have that Eureka moment of, hey Bobby, I found it. Watch these cutups right here. This is what they do to us in the second half. Like, not one person would find that out through five of the six weeks that you have not scored a touchdown in the second half. Not one person. And that's that to me kind of lends hand in hand with what you're just talking about. You had to Miko Ryans after the season ended last year talking about, hey, I think you guys saw why we lost to Baltimore because we got our butts kicked up front, both on the offensive and defensive line. Maybe that you're, maybe you were right when you said an hour ago. maybe this is a team that has its interpret that maybe they're getting into the metrics of it,

but obviously the eyes that they see on the Texans offensive line is what us naysayers, or not naysayers, but just the novice people are not seeing. Well, I mean, it's also, too, we were worried about this team being able to stop the run this year, and especially to Malik Collins and Sheldon Rankin's moving on and going elsewhere. It was like, well, you didn't really address that during the draft. You kind of did a little bit during... The grader at a sack again yesterday. I mean, I'm seeing guys all over the place

that used to wear Texans gear making differences with their teams. All right, Johnny, Jeff, and David, the three of you do not go anywhere. Matter of fact, we're going to push to tell the truth back a second because I want to get these folks on the air. We'll do it. We're going to do it. Okay.

Trust me, the tell the truth must be told. All right. Somebody must tell the truth. We'll talk to these three folks, then play to tell the truth next. 1127, Sports Talk, 790. We're with you today until 2 o'clock. Gordy's going to be in for the final hour with Dan.

We've got, believe it or not today, all things Chuck Woolery. passing with the age of 83. 713-212-5-790. I want to tell you about a great place where you can go, and that's Two Creek's Crossing Resort, for amazing fishing pickleball, 23 cabin rentals, waterfront cabins,

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40% off cabin rentals, 20% off RV site rentals at 2Creeks, TWO, 2Crossing Resort.com. Real quick, let's get these three calls in before we get to tell the truth. Johnny, North Houston on 790. Thanks for holding. Johnny, what's on your mind? Oh. Good news. The quarterback we drafted is way better than anyone thought he was going to be.

And we're ahead of schedule. I mean, we're ahead of schedule last year. We're ahead of schedule this year. That game was terrible. It was very painful to watch. Reminded me of Kamala Harris speech. But we're ahead of schedule. And there's opportunity there, guys.

Thanks. All right. I don't, see, I never turned in a Michael Berry show pretty quickly here. Ramon. Ramon. Ramon. Ramon, do you like macawat? Cats coffee.

K-A-T-Z. Don't give them a, they don't spend money with us. Don't give them a plug. Rambo, do you put Vanilla Bean ice cream on your cake or your pie or do you put it on both? Let's play an eight-minute song and then we'll do three live reads. All right, so bullish on CJ Stroud.

I mean, look, last year was amazing because we didn't... So let me ask you this. Johnny just said he was awesome this year or last year. He's okay this year. Does that make you feel like he's going to be bounced back next year? I don't think of it year to year. Do you? No, it's not year to year, but you know, it's also too.

I mean, just like any sport, you can have players who have players who have have a down year. He might just be having a down year, but the accuracy is still there. The ability to be able to make the play is still there. And seemingly, he's still the same guy as he was last year. It's just the results aren't following. Yeah. I think it's because he's lost faith in his offensive line.

I think there's nothing that can shake a quarterback, no matter if you're a 10-year veteran or a two-year guy that not... Go look at that video that's out there of Titus Howard. I mean, he is out there on an island by himself, just staying in there. he seriously did a ring around the rosy almost like he he did a full 360 turn of oh no like that guy went to the right guard so where's my guy oh dalton sholts lost him that's not going to be good david in Vegas on stevenani hi david hey guys um this is kind of a bookkeeping question but it's important to me because i just love watching the rockets this year but i don't have all the sports packages where i can watch every game and i have to figure out where and when i'm going to be to be to be able to be able to be able to catch games. And a particular importance to me is when they're playing in this emirates in-season tournament, otherwise known as the let's get Matt Thomas an extra trip to Vegas tournament. Got that damn straight. When I go to bed every night, I think I hope for world

peace, I hope of hell for my family, and I think of the trip to Vegas. Kind of seems like those first two priorities. Go ahead. get here maybe I can buy an adult beverage that would be good to see you but in any case my question is this is there an easy way looking at the schedule to figure out which of their games are in that tournament which aren't for instance we just

played these two games with Portland one was and one wasn't right but I can't I can't figure out a shortcut to do that without going and looking up whole I mean it's just really it's not easy the way people list the schedule I'm going to leave it for you I'm going to get some other folks and thanks David it's really easy they play there's only

four games they play in this so they've already been done with two of them. They either play them on Tuesdays or Fridays. They have played two so far. They're the home games. They have two games left in this in season in a cup tournament and they're both on Tuesdays. Tomorrow 9 in Minnesota, the following Tuesday in Sacramento. If they win one of the two, I want to say they're in the knockout round for sure. And the knockout round is against other groups or still their group? No, it's against other people's groups. Okay. You have the top, every knockout group, there's six of them, gets in and then you have two wild cards, one from each conference.

Eight goes down to four, four go to Las Vegas. Gotcha. Okay. God, I hope I'm going to Vegas. Have you found out where you possibly would be staying? No, no, you don't ask those questions. Okay. No. I mean, I'm just, I'm hoping for your sake, it's not like, hey, we're staying somewhere in Summerlin.

We're staying somewhere in Henderson. I don't care. Just get me there. So Uber travels, yeah, that's what you're saying. Okay. and I'm taking days off. So you'll be filling in because I'm not going to, I don't think I want to do 8 o'clock in the Vegas after being out the night before.

I can understand that. Well, I mean, actually, it could be fun because you could just go ahead and take it all the way the next morning. We're not going to do that. And we could have fun radio on the way. No, no, no, no. Jeff and downtown on Seven ony. Hi, Jeff.

Morning, happy Thanksgiving. Same good questions. Yes, sir. Impression of the day of our game. Outlook for the coaches, especially Dave Ironda. Dave Aronda is in great shape. They just won their seventh game. Total 180 for Hintz team after being in a lot of trouble.

He got a vote of confidence earlier this year for Mac Rose. I thought a director. And they're going to not only go to a bowl game, but a pretty damn good bowl game, I think. They have been the second biggest surprise in the league this year behind probably Colorado. He was a guy. Actually, third. BYU's been a huge surprise too. He was a guy when LSU lost him.

They were pretty bummed about it because he's not a raw, raw guy. He's not anywhere close to being. He's like librarian. energy guy. There's people who have said that he would probably be just as good as an AD as he is as a coach just because he's got that leadership quality. People listen to him, but also too at the same time. I mean, yeah, he's not a guy that's going to inspire a ton of confidence. But the same time, though, too, I almost feel like it's like the raw, raw, you know, greeting cards, sayings, all those different types of things, coaches that when you start losing, that's the first thing

that people go to. Is that you're just all nothing about hot air. Yeah. And Dave, trust me, I listen the press conference this week, getting ready for the pregame show. He is college philosophy lecture guy, which is strange to me because that typically doesn't resonate with people between the ages of 18 and 21. Do you even have to take philosophy anymore? No, I don't think of you, but you get my drift. Yeah, I had to take it in college, and we had a professor who always had to have a podium, and one day the classroom we were in did not have a podium, so he turned over a trash can to

use it as one. And we're like, he, like, he, he almost started to freak out of like, I have to have a podium. That's how he talked. I have to have a podium. We were like, was he in the movie Monsters Inc. too? No, no, no, no, no. You forgot to give your paperwork. He almost sounds like the, the, what's it? Speaking of Vegas. Oh, that's movie reference, by the way, that's by me. It's now one, one nothing on top of damn. I just had a soprano's reference. I mean, I had another one, too, of, you know, I was kind of queuing up if you want to have this take. You might get this response of, uh, Domeco Ryan's comparing him to Michael Scott from the office of people, you know, of saying things out loud, like when Michael Scott said, I declare bankruptcy. And then I was going to be Oscar of saying, you can't just say I declare bankruptcy.

That's not how this works. I've never seen an episode of office before. It'd be worth your time. I know. My engineer over here, Tom's like, what? If you all ever have like an overseas rockets trip, I would recommend it. No, I've got, oh, no, I got. I got to binge watch my Yacht Rock documentary.

It's coming out this week, I think, too, right? Huge. Yeah. You know, I mean, so I've told you about, like, you know, one of the shows that I still watch, it's not network TV. Yellowstone took a huge turn last night. It was nice. By the way, I don't even watch Yellowstone, but my wife does. And there's some crap going on with that family, the brothers.

I won't give away too much, but yikes. It's basically the Western version of what was the, well, that, but also, though, too. Secession. That's basically what it is. But they're a little bit more tight knit than the family was on Secession. Like you watched that. Did you ever watch Secession? I love Succession. Loved it. But like, isn't it like, I didn't like the last episode, but that's not the here to there. Every single person on the show, like at one turn, you're like, this person is ruthless. They're awful people. And it'd be like an episode later and you're like, all right, I kind of feel bad for Ronan. Like, it's just like, I never felt bad for him ever. I like to live.

Shiv. Shiv. Shiv. Yeah. Shiv. Yeah. Shiv. But I mean, but that's the thing. Like, even Tom, like, there were, like, a couple of times, like, this guy is just a dweeb. And then, like, what was it? The way that Shiv would treat him, you're kind of like, all right. I, like, I kind of get how he is now. I kind of feel bad for Tom. We cannot give anything else away because we'd be giving away the show at that point. So we'll leave Tom and Shib to let them be.

So you're still going to be crying, spoiler alert 10 years later of, you know, oh, man, spoiler alert. I wanted to watch that. It's like, it's all over the place now. Which, by the way, too, you know, Twitter is an awful place. Oh, it's treating me very well the last 12 hours. But I mean, but in terms of like... I've been insulted multiple times by people. If you want to avoid spoiler alerts, Twitter is the number one place. Like last night, like I said, I watched the episode of Yellowstone, and it's all over the place.

And I'm just like, you're just not doing a good community service to people of putting that out there. Okay. All right, we're going to come back and play to tell the truth. This is where I have four sports takes. Hey, how are we doing the prize vault this week? Conner, do we have a lot of stuff or a little bit of stuff? Because we could get the audience involved too if they want. We got some stuff.

I'll tell you when we'll come back. All right, you know what we'll do? Why don't we let a couple of people on the line? If they want to guess which one of my takes I don't believe, let's give me some prizes on to tell the truth. We'll do that next. So here's how it works. I've got four sports takes.

Three of them, I believe. One, I don't. If you can figure out which one I don't believe, you can win a prize from the Deep Prize Vault that Conom and Dee McGarver. tell you about so if you want to play to tell the truth of us 713-212-5-790 7-1-3-212-5-790 to tell the truth is next here on 790

more Matt Thomas now on sports talk 790 now I do lie more than the average person was this the game show that Frank Abagnale was on who catch me if you can remember the beginning scene no yeah it was that a movie reference it is a movie reference so I find me or slip up over the back

Let's go now. Come on now. All right. There you go. Back to music. What happened to our music? There it is. Here's how it's going to work. And Connor and Dan you're in.

Also, Bill and Matthew want to play to tell the truth. I got one more person coming in, too. We've got prizes. I don't know how good they are. I mean, normally they're average at best, but there may be a good one in the batch. And you know my rule about prizes. What is it?

My rule is when I tell you what the prize is, you do not come back at me and say, oh, you don't have any rocket tickets. You don't have any Astros tickets? All right, so what are we playing for? This isn't a Marshalls. Connors are going to tell us we're playing for here. We got a pair of tickets to see Howard Jones

and ABC Live February 17th of House of Blues and some $790 t-shirts. Okay, so if you're an 80s fan, you love Howard Jones. I have no idea who Howard Jones. He's got a couple of hits. All right. Four takes. Now, here's the difference this week.

Three of these, I believe. One, I don't. Okay. Here we go. Number one. Wait, so we need to find the lie. Yes, find the lie. The rest of these are the truth. I got news for you. Hannah is an emotional wreck right now.

She's going to tell D'Amico the handover play calling duties of Gerard Johnson. Gotta shake something up. That's how you do it. Okay? Number two. The third overtime rule in college football is ridiculous. Where you only have to go,

you go for the two-point conversions of the side games. Case in point, the A&M Auburn game. I'm not saying that because I like the Aggies. I'm just saying that because, It's just patly absurd. So I think you should go to the second overtime rule and keep it, that is. Keep it the 25-yard line. But when you score a touchdown after the second overtime,

you have to go for two every single time. That's the one I think you should go to, okay? Number three, let's get rid of conference records in the NBA playoffs. Now, you schedule the same way, but the top 16 teams in the NBA, regardless of conference, get in. So one year if 11 Eastern teams get in in five West, or one year it's nine and eight or nine and seven, so be it. Top 16 records, regardless of conference, getting into the playoffs. And then you

receive that way. So in round one, you could see the Rockets playing Golden State, and round two, they could play the Bucks. In round three, they could play the Cavaliers. So almost a pared down version of the NCAA tournament. Yeah. Okay. All right. Number four. Now, stay with me on this. If you win a tiebreaker, because we're going to have a lot of this weekend, if you win a tiebreaker to play in a conference championship game. All right? A team that you won the tiebreaker over can't make the college football tournament over you.

Meaning this. You can't be penalized because you won the tiebreaker but then you went to the conference championship game and lost it. Does that make sense to you? Sure. Conner, you understand that what I'm saying to? Yep. All right.

So I'll make sure I say it one more time. If you win a tiebreaker to playing a conference championship game, a team that you had the tiebreaker over can't make the college football tournament over you because you lost one more game. All right, so here are the four takes. You just heard that one. Hannah's going to make Damiko

give the play calling duties to Gerard Johnson. Third overtime rule is beyond stupid in college football. She'll go back to the second overtime rule. And let's get rid of the conference records in the NBA playoffs. Top 16 teams, regardless of conference, make the playoffs. Which one of those four? Am I not telling the truth? All right, Connor, we have to be strategic here

Because last week, I think me and you, even though it seemed like it was obvious We only gave ourselves a 25% chance. So there's two of us and there's four chances here. So I'm going to cede to you first. See, Dan, we're not playing together. I'm playing against you. Yeah, exactly. He wants to win. He went a self-gratification. Yes. Sure.

So the first one, when he's first said, I mean, that's got to be the lie in my mind. I mean, as much as we might want to see a play calling change, there's no way they do that mid-season. Jared Johnson. Second one, college football rules, I get why Matt wouldn't like it. So maybe he's telling the truth about that.

I'm a little, I'm if you're on three, because the playoffs get a little messy when you don't have the conferences, I feel. And a lot of other, every other sport does conferences. And then, Matt can tell the truth of the first. So I'm between one and three. What do you feel, Dan? Don't overthink it. but one just seems pretty obvious.

Yeah, I agree. You know what? I'm going to go out on a limb. I'm going to take number one. I'm going to see number one too. Oh, then I'll take number three. No, take what you feel. No, we can win together. All right. That's okay.

Okay. All right. Bill and Katie, which one am I lying about? That's also tough of one and three, but I'm going to go with one. You think I'm telling a lie about Damiko handing over to the play calling you? to Gerard Johnson. All right. Put you on hold there. Let's go to Matthew and Cyprus. Matthew, which one of those four am I lying about? Well, it looks like I'm going to join the whole boat here. I'm going all in with the number one. All right, very good.

And Keisha on line four. Kisha, which one am I lying about? I'm going to say number one as well. All right. Boy, this is the first time in the history to tell the truth. A completely unanimous group. It's a unanimous guess. Number four, I absolutely believe. You cannot penalize. as a team that goes the championship game and the other team could say, well, we didn't go to the term, we have one last loss. You can't do that. It's not fair.

That's going to potentially happen, by the way. It's already happened twice. Yeah. Because Ohio State, the year they won it, the very first year of the playoff, they didn't play in the Big Ten championship game. And they ended up winning the whole thing. And then last year, Georgia, losing a close one to Alabama, and they were out. Ironically, every conference has multiple layers of Thai burgers because there's no divisions.

It's a hot mess. Don't penalize that team for being good enough to win tiebreaker. I'm not super thrilled about this, but the West is significantly better than the East. There's going to be some Western Conference teams that are going to be in the playoffs that won't make the playoffs this year because strictly conference. Rockets were a case of that last year. They demand the playoffs if they were in the East. So I don't mind taking the top 16 teams regardless of conference and making them in playoffs.

I believe that too. I figured you had no problem with it. I mean, and eventually, too, if the league continues to become so top-heavy in certain areas. then maybe that that becomes the thing. Yeah, sure. Down to two boys and girls. You sure? They're not making any changes in play calling the middle of the year.

That was a lie. You guys are all right. All of you got it. All right. Like I said, don't overthink. I honestly think, guys, if you did that, the panic button would be hit over and over and over again. You have to at least stay status quo this year.

Then if you want to readjust and revalue positions and what's being done and making changes. Doing it in December would be absolutely ridiculous. Now, you know, your college football overtime idea? Yeah. Scott Van Pelt, I saw this making its rounds yesterday with an idea. Why not have it start at the 50?

I'm okay. I thought the way the A&M Auburn game ended, among many other games that go multiple overtimes, is ridiculous. It's the epitome of gimmicky. Well, it's 25-yard line is semi-gigms. Jimicky, having to score and then score and then score, it's a pinball machine.

It's penalty kicks in soccer. It's ridiculous. Which, I mean, you know, you've played all this entire game and one play determines how, I mean, you know, I know that it's also too, oh, well, you know, one play can determine a game and it literally does. But, I mean, I'm also a proponent of especially in power four football, go NFL rules, hash marks are the same, uprights are the same. the yardages, obviously,

and how wide the field is, it's the same. So go NFL rules for overtime. And if it ends in a tie, it ends in a tie. Like kissing your sister. That sucks, but, I mean, it's also, too. We have very rare ties in the NFL. Yeah. I see, I would like to see the tie the game extended to 15 minutes.

I think 10's too short, but that's neither here nor there. All right, thank you. Boy, did I let everybody down? Or was it just painfully obvious number one was a lie? I mean, I understand emotions can play into it, but also two at the same time. I mean, I think there's enough trust in that building and what D'Amico wants to do that it's like a, hey, hey, hey, just let them be. If you made it change this late in the season, it would be the sign of we are massively imploding. And I don't think the Texas want to give out that image.

Well, it's not that you're massively imploding. It's that you're massively overreactive. Yeah. And this is the time not to be that. All right. The news at noon is next. 1157 on Sports Talk 790. This is the Matt Thomas show.

This will be the 10th play of the drive. Titans have the fewest 10 play drives in the NFL. They're going for it all. They've got it all. Westbrook Akine. He beat Derek Stingley. It's 38 yards, and the Titans take the lead. Quartz it!

They go to Poward again. Pollard burst inside the five toward the goal line. Touchdown, Titans. Tony. powered with his fourth touchdown run of the year last three drives 13 plays minus one total yards for the titans and the pick six he's got some inside texas territory inside the 35 30 25 20 25 touchdown titans good snap good hold the kick is no good a lot of guys are looking the mirror dan matthews but i heard will the texans change their ways

Energy. Can't finish games. I heard all that yesterday. Who's more pissed? Domeko or Hannah? Probably Hannah. Hannah was blank talking the Titans all week long. I mean, not only that, but what was it? There was the interview on the sidelines with,

I can't remember who it was before the U of H. Baylor game. It's Houston Blue. Didn't Hannah say that? I didn't pay attention. Yeah. I was just more concerned about the fact that my team can't score any points, but that's a different issue at a different time. All right, Matt Thomas show with Ross.

Ross today is, I believe, he said Mongolia is a reason why it is. So he'll be back on the week or so. You're filling in today. He's got that total recall little, you know, kind of time travel or go through the middle of earth thing, doesn't you? Yeah, he does. Good for him. Yeah, it was. Two different incarnations of total recall, too.

So there you go. All right, there you go. Ladies gentlemen, 1205, it's noontime. You're like, what's going on the world? Let's find out with the news at noon. And to the news, ask we go. Dan Matthews, filling in for Rossville-R-R-R-R-R-A. All right, Texans lose to the Titans, 32227.

7-5 now on this season. The Colts, if you want some good news, losing to the Lions 24 to 6. They're always going to lose. They're not good. They have a really soft part of their schedule coming up, though. So if you think that the Texans have this thing wrapped up, far from it.

They do. They've got the Patriots this week. All it takes is nine wins. I think they've got both Jacksonville and Tennessee 12. twice over the last few weeks. Ain't scared. Texans are AFC South champions. Now, nothing more than that, but that's what they're going to be. But the Texans commit

11 penalties, four on offense, three on defense, four on special teams yesterday. Including MJ Stewart, that nice little personal foul he had. Back to Texans up to, I believe, the eight-yard line. And then back to the one after they got sacked, and then CJ Stroud bumped out of the back of the end zone.

By way, was he doing his worst Dan Orlovsky or best Dan Orlovsky impersonation on that? I mean, he really had no choice at that point. It was either that or probably a intentional grounding and that's the game. God, Almighty. What has happened? We'll talk about more than a nutshell. I want to know from you Houston, folks. Let's clear our phone lines here.

We'll get to you guys just a second. 713-212-5-790. I'm going to give you an open-ended statement. You know, like you used to fill in the blind. when you were in school? Of course. Analogies, all that kind of stuff, yeah. What I want you to know is, I want you to fill in the blank. This is what happened to the Texans in 2025.

Now, four. Now, the season is not over with. But I think we kind of know the pattern in which they're going. I mean, do we not? What happened to this year's Texans? 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Resume the news at noon.

All right, you say Kikuchi no longer in Astro. He's now a Los Angeles Angel of Anaheim. Three years, 63 million. John Heyman first to report. Don't give him credit. He's a douche. I thought that first hand, too. I didn't make that up. Sorry, I didn't mean, rhetoril. I said that.

No, it's okay. I just, I didn't know if you were finished. I was going to let you continue to... No, I'm done. I just... Get in and get out. But yes, you say Kikuchi. Two plus months of work with the Astros. Good work, but no longer an Astro. Now in the division, though. And please say that Joey Lopofito doesn't hit 23

home runs this year. Or Will Wagner. or what's the pitcher's name? Jake Bloss. May Jake Bloss enjoy a successful career as Syracuse Blue Jay. That's fair. I think they're like the Buffalo, what, Red Wings or whatever. I think that's their team. Got you.

But yes. So a potential free agent target for the Astros to retain this offseason is no longer an option for them. All right. Which means you've got one last guy in the rotation, which means hopefully Luis Garcia is ready to go. Lance for colors. I'm not necessarily worried about it at this juncture. Yeah, Dana didn't really, if you listened to him when he was on Astroline, he did not curry a ton of confidence that Lance McCullors is even going to be ready.

That's the way I read it. Will Lance ever pitch for the Astros ever again? I'm telling you, if it's a long, prolonged he's out this season, I think Lance has got to retire. He's... $85 million. He's got to at least entertain the idea. Okay.

Because, I mean, this would have been, in that case, at least two years that he has not pitched. I can't remember the last time he pitched. Now that you mention it, was it the World Series? Was it the pitch tipping game, game three? I don't know. But, I mean, it's been so long since I remember him. I remember him one time pitching in Arizona when he was mad. The roof was opened up because all of a sudden.

Yeah, it was the COVID year. I remember that. Yeah, he melted down because of that. But, look, Lance is a really nice guy. Great guy. terrible for him. But man, what a terrible, terrible investment. And I understand what he said last year, too, to Will Conkull. And he's probably

is not probably, he's not wrong. Like he doesn't want to be injured. But it's also too at the same time. I've been told before when I've brought this up, oh, don't say that to Lance. He'll get angry with you. I think you were the one that gave me that warning. Oh, it was Gordy because I think he gave a stink out of Gordy one time. But when you come back, consider the bullpen. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He does not like that. Do you want a pitch or do you want to

stay injured because clearly you can't handle the workload of being a starting pitcher. So again, do you want to continue pitching or do you want to have these fits and starts like you've had for the better part of the last three or four years? They can go out and get a free engine pitcher this offseason? They have to. I wonder if Verlander's like, I'm here, dude. I'll stay. Pay me.

I'll come back. I'm not ready to retire. One year, 12 million. That's a lot. Continue on. All right. So all is not lost for the Aggies. Get to that here in just a second.

Texas and Texas A&M Week. It is here. First time we can say that since 2011. Texas beats Kentucky 31 to 14. The Aggies, though, find themselves in desperation mode because they lose in four overtimes, 4341 to Auburn. Can the Aggies answer?

Down 43, 41. Direct snap, pitch back, Reed, rolls right. They started playing War Eagle, all those different things. First of all, the play call was amazing. Yes. It was executed perfectly, except the ball hit him right in the hands. I don't know that was just brilliant. And you know who the play call was from, right?

Former Texan Colin Klein. He's the O.C. for A&M. My son, my middle son, who is a diehard Aggie, was not happy with how that turned out. Sure. And he threw his phone. Well, he's an Aggie fan, so he probably should be used to it at this point, but I can understand. So life lesson learned. He calls his mother yesterday and says, I broke my phone. How did you do that?

And he told us. And so he drove his ass from college station to Willowbrook Mall to the Apple Store and paid for the repairs. I mean, points for honesty there, but I mean, also, too. Payton, I'm assuming as to who it was? Yeah, Peyton. Like, white lies every once in a while don't hurt you. I fell down the stairs. I'm okay, but the phone's not. By the way, Brian McTaggart texted me. He said, I got feeling hit because he thought Auburn was going to win too. Apparently, and you know this better than I do, people do not like playing in Jordan Hare at night for some reason. Well, I mean, you heard Nick Saban earlier in the day say there's witchcraft, there's magic, there's something there. It is a tough place to play. It really is.

Because that huge video board, it almost feels like it's on top of you, and the fans almost feel like they're on top of you as well. like they've, I mean, Iron Bowl. Have you been there before? Oh yeah, numerous times. So how, let's rank Auburn in the most important category? In terms of stadiums? No, go-eds. Oh, oh, very good.

Really? Yes, very good. Okay. Yeah. Upper half of the league. I'd say, 16 team league. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd say they're inside.

I mean, I was going to say the top six, but now it's top eight. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. Anything else with the news at noon? All right. So it's travel season, which by the way, too, before we move on the travel season. All is not lost for the Aggies, as I talked about.

They beat Texas on Saturday. Okay. And if they do that, they go to the SEC championship game. If they beat a beatable Georgia team, they win the SEC, automatic birth into the college football player. So A&M can either go to the championship game or head to some weak-ass bowl no one cares about. No, like the citrus bowl or something like that. Music City or something goofy like that. Right.

Yeah, exactly. All right. So I know that you have a rule about mentioning businesses that don't sponsor, but I feel like for this story, I have to. Just rhyme it. Okay. American Marlins is testing. What was your rhyme again? American Marlins? You said American Barelines? Sure. Well, you could have gone with, okay, whatever, go ahead. All right. So they've been testing a new system that uses a noise alert to prevent passengers from trying to board a plane before their group is called. They're going to add a hundred of these systems. or they're going to add systems to 100 different airports around this upcoming Thanksgiving holiday with more coming in months. I like this idea.

By the way, this little warning system we're talking about should be rude. Like, get your ass back in line. What a loser. You can't follow the rules. What are you doing? Yeah, you're not going to catch. We're not going to let you on early.

You know who could voice that? Jeff Blum. What are you doing, man? No, Larry David, we should do it. Larry David would be great. Yeah. You know what? That maybe is my way into getting into the airports across the country, is having my voice do it.

I mean, sit your ass down. I like that. Not your turn, Biocch. That could work too. All right. I love it. Barrican Airlines, good for you. And that's the news at noon.

Back on the phones next. Here's the short answer question. What has gone wrong with the Texans this year? Open-ended. We'll accept all answers. 1214 on Sports Talk 790. More Matt Thomas. Now on Sports Talk 790.

All right. The short answer is, what has happened to the Texas? Let's give you a few couple of thoughts here and then we'll get to the phones. We've got people that want to get to on hold. 713212-5-790. Offensive line is not improved. It's a week-in, week-out problem for this team. Play-calling has been significantly more conservative in back half of games than it has been in front half.

It's been overthought. Overthought. I think there's a little bit of here we go again. I think the secondary is while the team is intercepting balls left and right, they're also being torched for long plays. I mean, it feels like the number of explosive plays are growing week after week after week. I mean, hell, if Anthony Richardson's completing deep balls, some of the worst touchdowns given up this year have been to Will Levis and to Anthony Richardson.

Think about that. And think about this. You have all those games. Think about yesterday. you sack Levis eight times you intercept Jared Gough five times four really but five technically you don't want either one of those games

damn what is wrong with the Texans let me hear from me right now 713212 5790 am I missing anything oh Kami Fairbairns got the yips lately yeah yeah that's one which by the way he should have been penalized for his helmet throw

I mean, it was kind of interesting because there wasn't official right there. And as soon as he did it, you saw one of his teammates like run over, grab the helmet and be like, dude, like you can't do that. Yeah. Yep. 713-2125790. Gary, answer my question. How are you, sir? I'm doing just fine.

Thank you, sir. Sure. The problem with the Texans is the past four or five weeks when the line got so porous and all the beatings. up and the pounding that our quarterback has taken, that has shaken his confidence and everything. So that's what I see is wrong

with them. But I have a question for you because everything is doom and gloom and everything on that. The question I have for you, what do we have to do to get back into first place in our division so we can make the playoffs? Do you think we'll ever get there or do we have to wait until next year?

No, they're in first place now by two games. Gary, They've won the division. Yeah, there's no if they're winning the division. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they are. They are. I listen to the radio and all out here is doom and gloom like they're Owen 15 or something like that.

Well, I don't worry about it. There's plenty of time to correct the ship, but that's what the problem is. He's getting beat up too much, and that's the way I see it. Yeah, I, so it's the offensive line. I mean, the reality is this. You were the, you went to the very, you went to the very. original round of the playoffs last year. You made significant moves

for Stefan Diggs, Joe Mixon, who else, on the defensive side of things? You got in the office season. Aziz Al-Shayr, De Nico Hunter, De Nico Autry. Yeah, I mean, you, in theory, got better. And you got Titus Howard back,

and you thought you're going to have Kenyon Green back, and you thought you had the most stable offensive line. I mean, everything was built to be better than you were a year before. It just hadn't turned out there. rated move of the off season, and I believe he did get a penalty yesterday, Tim Settle. He's been good, yeah.

He's been really good. So, I mean, again, it gets back to what D'Amico talked about, the kind of post-mortem there on that Monday of, well, I think we found out that when you don't control the line of scrimmage, you don't win in the playoffs, and we did not control the line of scrimmage against Baltimore. Hence, we got the result we got in the second half. But it's also, too, it's twofold. It's not just the defensive line. Then why not look at the offensive line and say, hey, are we? we really as good as we think we are? We've got plenty of time here, guys.

Let's do a deep dive. I understand we got the draft. We've got all of that. Oh, man, that's a missed assignment right there. Yep, that's not good either. Maybe that guy's not as good as we thought. Do we need to upgrade at that spot? Like, that had to be done, right?

So when I want to do the next segment of the show, you were in the locker room yesterday. Yes. I want to play some sound bites. Okay. And let's, when I was in school, we had a class called oral interpretation, where you would read something and you would interpret how it was read, how it was produced, whatever the case would be. And I want to listen to these guys,

and I want to, not say I want to hear the BS fact. I want to hear how genuine their concerns are. Unlike when I was in school, I actually did do the book report. I read. I studied. I'm ready. I can give a good prison. Because I want to know if they really are saying what they're, if they really mean what they say if there is concern in their voice or it's a i got to say this to say this and we're going to fix this so i'm going to let you decide three or four sound bites could be coach it could be a player you figure it out and we'll just kind of see how genuine they are because look we're emotional messes when it comes to weekend and week out right that's what sports fans do highs are highs lows are lows. We're in the Super Bowl one week.

We're going to not make the playoffs the next. Astros are going to win the World Series one week and we're not going to make the playoffs next. I mean, that's what fandom is. And that's what talk shows do. I mean, we try to regulate as best we can. And that's why I keep saying over and over again, Texans are 7 and 5. They're going to win this division.

But I would say even to the most average of Texans fans, the end game wasn't just to win the AFC South. It was to be better and get over the hump to go try to beat Lamar Jackson or Pat Mahomes. And right now it feels even further to those two teams than it even did a year ago. So you're feeling the same way about U of H basketball

because I've heard you say it that Texan fans are about this team. Winning the division is not a novel concept anymore. You've done it. You've been there, you've gotten past it, getting past the wild card around the same deal. Right. I mean, just like you saying, hey, I'm tired of Sweet 16s,

I want elite eights, I want final fours, I want to even get to a championship Monday for us to say, Hey, this is something. And Texan fans are the same way right now because that's what the expectation was this year. The expectation was, hey, not only are we going to get past divisional round weekend, we're going to be one of those teams that doesn't have to play until divisional round weekend. How many more years do Texans fans want to be the bridesmaid? You want to get married?

You want to have a honeymoon night? You saw it last week in Dallas. Like that was like an overflowing of emotion of God, I've been so sick and tired of hearing these people run their mouths. and then we come into their house and we beat the hell out of them and we start dancing on the stars on top of roofs of fieldside suites and doing all that kind of stuff. Who was doing that?

There was a guy that was on top of one of the stars on one of the awning roofs or whatever it is right there at the stadium. And yeah, and the caption for it on Texans social media was, walk into your trap, take over your trap. Got a movie reference? It's a rap song reference. Okay, fair enough. All right, we're going to go in the locker room,

Let you hear a few sound bites. I'll let you decide. And I have not heard most of this. This will be just organically as much as you guys are hearing it as well. We've got some more people that want to talk as one. I love the conversation with y'all. 713-212-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790.

Believe it or not today, hosted by Dan Matthews, is all things Chuck Woolery. That's at 150 here on 790. Welcome, good afternoon. The best sports lunch in H-town. Matt's really smart. He works hard. He has a good grasp of players.

He's been around the game. You love him. We love him. So excited for the opportunity that Matt has in front of him for sure. This is the Matt Thomas show. All right, let's go in the locker room right now, Dan Matthews. Nick Casario likes you. That's nice. He's a big fan. Okay.

He listens to the show twice a week at minimum? Oh, okay. So him and Ryan Presley. Ryan's a big fan of the show. Love Ryan. You know who was a big fan of the show back in the day? Was Bob McNair? Really?

Yeah. Okay. I don't think Cal listens. I think Cal listens to one station, and that's fine. But Bobby's listen to us all the time. Cal seems like he's probably like a country gold guy. I don't know what he listens to, but I mean, he was at the Cougar game on Saturday. We're in the Houston Blue.

It was cool. Yeah, showing support for the community. I like it. Yeah, it's fine. All right. So you're ready to go inside the locker. Here we go. I'm going to close my eyes, because I like to close my eyes sometimes.

Okay. And I want to imagine these guys tell us who's speaking, the comment coming out. And then let's just kind of do a little mini deep dive into what is really in their heart and soul right now. All right. So it worked even harder. Me and Wex did yesterday over at NRG Stadium. We're going to go two inside the locker room, one from the podium. Let's start with one from the locker room.

Will Anderson, one of the first guys, to step in front of his locker and talk with the media yesterday. And he said this is no time for them to feel sorry for themselves. When you want something as bad as we want it, of course you're going to be frustrated. Of course you're going to feel a little down. but like you got another game coming up. We can't mope on this one. We got 24 hours, man. It's on to the next.

And we got another division opponent and how we're going to respond to that opponent. You know, we go out of here, everybody go do that thing, look at their stuff in the mirror, and come back ready to work and get their job done. So there you go. Matter of fact.

Oh, did you call him on a phone booth during this or what? No, it was in the locker room. I mean, there's a lot of stuff happening in there. But so. Who was that again? Will Anderson Jr. So matter of fact. Bunch of sacks yesterday.

God, he's good. He was good. He was really good. good for them yesterday. But I mean, he's not wrong. Like, there's other teams out there that realize the Texans are struggling. They're going to play them hard. They're going to try to beat them. I mean, now, like, do you think Jacksonville feels even better about this game this week than they did yesterday? I'm sure they do. Yes. Because a 2-18 coming to Houston, Texas to win that game. And a coach who's trying to save his job. Right. And I guess we'll see on Trevor Lawrence,

if he's going to play or not, probably not. But Mac Jones, a guy who wants to prolong his career. so Will Anderson saying, hey, we're seven and five, we're still in first place, but if you're going to start feeling sorry for yourself, this is the wrong place for you. I don't want them feeling sorry for themselves. So, we all can agree on that. Boy, he wants this to be shaken off, and I guess you'd have to do it that way, right? There's no other way. I mean, if you sit there and bemoan everything that's gone wrong, you never get out of this funk.

So I would have to say interpreting that is, that's, a good attitude to have. Yeah. I'm okay with it. What happens when you have a, you know, you were broken up with, you did not do the breaking up. You're down into dumps, so she doesn't love me anymore, all of those different things, but then you start to get back into the gym, you start to put yourself back out there. You start to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Oh, so you're saying the Texans should go to the gym. They need to go to the gym. They need to, you know, stop thinking about her, stop talking about her, and then stop telling everybody, oh, but you know, I'm over her. Well, you keep bringing her up.

Just get back in those online dating things. That. Get on. That's it. Have casual sex. Hey, go out with Connor McGovern. It seems to work out well for him. By the way, kind of, we've not checked. Everything gone right with you on your life?

I'm taking now. Oh! Yes. I don't stay on the market along. Look at this guy. Look at you. You tested for agency and somebody snagged you up quick. Yeah.

The money was right. So we're going to meet her soon. Connor does the DFA. He does not get DFA. We're going to meet her soon, right? First of the year at a Rockets game? Yeah, I'll take her over. I'll meet you.

All right. good. There you go. All right. Continue on, sir. All right. So let's go to the podium now. C.J. Stroud, kind of in the same vein, talking about things have not worked. You know, they've tried a lot of things, and it's not been going their direction. So, it's back to the drawing board. You've got to practice really hard.

Got to be really on each other. You know, everybody has to look at yourself in the mirror and try to get things fixed. So that'll be the plan for this week, practicing, getting better. Personally, I've got to get better. As a team, we have to get better. And, you know, trying to go to Jacksonville and get a dub before by week. All right. That's where he's running out of things to say.

Self, help. That sounds a little more of, I got to say this because I really want to be really pissed off, but I can't be pissed off. Sure. I mean, you're trying to not deflect blame because that's the worst thing you can do. You start pointing fingers. It's the whole bunch of them pointing back at you. Here's what he wanted to say. I'm sick of running for my life.

I'm sick of making bonehead of mistakes because I'm better than this. But damn, we're all wearing this. And I don't, hmm, he, I don't know if he knows, I don't know if he's got the answers or not. I think he knows the problem. I don't know if they know how to fix it. Does that make sense? No, I mean, I brought up the same thing about Bobby Slowick earlier is, I mean, what do we get every Thursday in this case this week? It's going to be Wednesday.

whenever Bobby Sloic is asked about, hey, second half issues, all those different types of things, we get a minute and a half of word salad. And usually when somebody gives me word salad, they either, A, don't know what they're talking about or B, they're not telling the truth. Yeah. And, I mean, that's the whole thing. Like, you know, hey, you're trying to lose weight. Did you eat dessert last night?

That told me all I need to know. Okay. I mean, it's either, it's either more. Play that sound like this to me sounds like I'm in front of a podium. I really want to say more, but I can't. Here, play it one more time. You've got to practice really hard. Got to be really on each other.

You know, everybody has to look at this stuff in the mirror and try to get things fixed. So that'll be the plan for this week, practicing, getting better. Personally, I've got to get better. As a team, we have to get better. And, you know, trying to go to Jacksonville and get a dub before by week. So broad statements without any real type of. accountability is that kind of where you're going with this no i think he's i think he's running out of the i'm i'm disappointed in us trying to find some new verbiage that's how i get it is that he's just running

out of the cliched proper things to say so without throwing somebody else underneath he's throwing himself out in front of the bus um i wouldn't say throwing the bus i think i think he's exasperated does that make sense to you yeah all right continue on all right So let's go back inside the Texans locker room. Henry Toa Toe, meeting with the media in front of his locker. And apparently there was something said in the locker room by fellow linebacker Aziz Al-Shayr. As Toa-toe says, this is a gut check moment for them. I think Aziz said it best, like look at yourself in the mirror.

And we'll look at each other in our position groups and then we'll come together as a whole. As always, it's one to lose. I hate losing. I hate losing. and every time we lose, I try to look at myself at what I can do better, and I think I could have made a better impact in this game. That's honest and forthcoming. I like that.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's also, too, of everybody wants to fix everything at one time. I mean, you've got to try to kind of be and get ready, Connor. You've got to try to be Ed Harris and Apollo 13. What's the problem? I mean, seriously, like, that's the thing. You have to try to find a little slow back there on it.

There you go. All right, but that's it. Failure is not an option. So you're trying to be able to find a way and how do you do that? Hey, linebackers, are we doing everything we can do? Hands go up. Yeah, yeah, we are defensive line? Are we doing everything?

Yeah, sure, you know, it wasn't great to have Tony Pollard run for us, run all over us the way he did yesterday. Secondary, how about you guys? Yeah, we're pretty good back here. I mean, you know, a guy named Westbrook Aquene, beat us for a huge play and then also to the tight-in. And Will Levis, by the way. And Will Levis, a guy that puts mayonnaise in his coffee.

You think it's a bit or do you legitimately does that? Supposedly it's real. Because I like mayonnaise, but I would never put it in my coffee. Manez only belongs on sandwiches that are closed and compact and ready to be eaten. That's it. Okay. Yeah, everywhere else mayonnaise is disgusting. And also, too, he also will eat bananas with the peel on whole.

That's gross. Yeah. That's nauseating. If they're really ripe bananas. Because you get some of them that are pretty tough and you got to peel them. Like you have no choice. So that's the guy you lost to in a nutshell, that you sacked eight times and threw a pick six in this game. Which coming off of that, you had a Detroit game, you know, Detroit game at home where you intercepted their quarterback five times and you're 0 and 2 in both of those games.

Oh, and 2 in which you sack a quarterback eight times or you intercept a person's past five times. Ooh, Lordy. So I'd say it's much more than a lack of execution on the offensive end. All right. Mike and James get to you coming back. If you want to follow those gentlemen up, you may do so at 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Matt and Dan in for Ross, who is in Portugal today. We'll talk to you at 7-1-3-212-5-7-90.

Matt Thomas continues on Sports Talk 790. 1247. I'm headed off to Minneapolis here at the top of the hour. Gordy's going to come in. I cannot wait to get to Minneapolis. I have a lot of great friends there. One of my good friends, she works at a TV station. Okay. And she works at the news desk, and it's so crazy. She has the weirdest people she works with. She has this overbearing news director who's just, real sexist pig, basically.

And then the news anchor is this guy that just reads anything on the teleprompter. You could put anything on there and he would screw it up. Okay. And what else? And there's this woman on the, I mean, a friend of hers is a woman that she does like a, she's like a happy homemaker segment. And she's really rude, but she's not, they call her the happy homemaker, but she's miserable. Interesting.

And this girl who I used to know in Minneapolis, she's got some really crazy neighbors too. Hmm. Okay. Just throwing it out there. Is her name Mary by chance? It could be. Damn. It's going to try to get to.

Not this one. Yeah, there were plenty as a little kid, Nickette Knights. Damn. The Mary Tyler Moore Show. All I want to tell you is, love is all around. Because I was going to ask, too, if her co-worker, was it a fellow anchor, you said? Yes. Did they have a legal background?

No. Because I got to know Ted Knight, obviously, as Judge Elihu Schmails. Yes. You got a bowl of soup of that hat? Mike and Tom Ball on 790. Hi, Mike. Hey, you guys. Good, how are you? Good. We're not going to send you to the gas chamber. We don't feel like we owe it to you.

Well, that's good. That's a plus. I was just chiming in on the what's wrong with the Texan question and in my humble, uninformed opinion. I think it's obvious. I don't want to go captain obvious here, but with the offensive line. So beyond that, I'd say it's, you know, lack of discipline, which is weird to say with Demico Ryan's as your head coach. But, you know, just little things like attention to detail and all these penalties that are racking up for no reason, late hits out of back. false starts holding the little that play early in the game where Agung Bawali just let the ball go in the end zone and didn't, and it was just laying there and he had to frantically go back and cover it or they were going to give him an easy touchdown. I think stuff like that just mounts during a game and it just puts you, you know, one step forward, two steps back and it seems like it never ends. I'm just going to get y'all's take on that. I do believe that when you have mental breakdowns and high-pitched, penalties and not smart play calls.

That's not I want to go. It's not owning your job. You want to win the coaching battle. And I think Demico, unfortunately, because of the mental mistakes and the fact the team is a different football team in the third and fourth quarter that is in the first and second, loses some of those intangibles. It's kind of a feeling of. But I'm not giving up on Demiqa. He still was the right decision. He is a good football coach.

He will someday be a great football coach. But right now he is going through, and I hate this term, adversity, because I hate adversity. Everybody's got adversity. But this is an adverse time for the team because they are underperforming and they're barely holding on for dear life and in the first place in the AMC South. Well, and Mike's not wrong on two fronts. I mean, he brought up the Agumbo Wally play. I mean, that's one of those. Dude, know the rules.

Like, know what the rules are. That's still a live ball right there. Like, that's again getting back to what should be covered in training camp. That's why you have officials out there. That's why you go through all these things in practice because the game should be easy. So Mike's 100% right on that. And offensive line as well, what do we hear football coaches? Like football is the ultimate sport of everybody says the same thing.

And it's do your job, try to improve, own your craft, all those different types of things. And offensive line is absolutely that. Like offensive line is, what is my assignment here? Who am I supposed to block? What do I do here? Do I pull? Do I not? like all of these different types of things that seemingly should be incredibly basic.

These are things you learn when you're playing high school football. And these are things that are alluding this team right now. So Mike's not wrong about that. Like he's actually hit it right on the head in terms of what the issues are with this team. Because the mistakes they're making, you're seriously like, this is basic, like the most like, you know, basic of football. And you're making those mistakes. And it's costing you games. I mean, I did the penalty breakdown from the game yesterday.

Four special teams penalties. Four. That's either a lack of focus or a lack of attention to detail. Because Frank Ross is considered a very good special teams coach, right? I think he's considered to be one of the best. And they have been good in special teams. They were really good last year on special teams. And you were loving that special team,

especially when Damien Pierce ran off that huge run to start the game. There you go. But then it's holding. on trying to protect. You know, the MJ Stewart's personal foul that backed you up to the eight-yard line, and we obviously saw what happened after that. But, I mean, you're going to be getting into these games against Baltimore, against Kansas City, where if you lose the special teams battle, you're losing the game.

Greg and River Oaks at 1253 on 790. Thanks for holding, Greg. What's on your mind today? Good afternoon, gentlemen. I just wanted to make a couple observations about the game. yesterday. You know, I had the privilege not too long ago to meet Demico Ryan's, and I walked away feeling like I hadn't spoken to a more nice, more put-together guy. He is a gentleman. He is just a quality, quality human being, and I think that's part of the problem. There were some players

on the field yesterday that had Jimmy Johnson been the coach, would have been unemployed this morning. And I don't know of Ryan's has that in his DNA. Somebody needs to really, really kind of get out in front of this because obviously this is now a trend. This wasn't just a one-off yesterday. This has been a trend that's been building over the course of the last few weeks. I also think last year was a false sense of security. and I don't think anybody told these guys that every year is different. And what might have been a great season last year doesn't necessarily mean it's going to translate to this year, which it has not. And then last but not least, C.J. Stroud is a once-in-a-lifetime gift for the Houston Texans.

It's not going to get much better than that. But the problem is I think C.J. thinks too highly of himself. And I remember after the game against the Bears earlier in the year, where we pulled the game out, and CJ was quick to offer Caleb, I forget the kid's last name. Caleb Williams. Give Caleb Williams advice after the game, and you could see that Caleb Williams looked at him like, you've got to be kidding me. I mean, you know, there are three quarterbacks in the league right now that are in a position to give anybody advice.

and one of them is not CJ. He just needs to stay in his lane and just worry about himself. Yeah, but you know what? And I got to roll. I get to the top of the hour break. Thank you. The quarterbacks have to take advantage of their responsibility and be a leader. I think CJ can do that.

I don't think anyone's sitting there going, C.J. stay in your lane. I don't want C.J. staying in his lane. I want everyone to be held accountable. And I want guys on my football team or any team for that matter to say, hey, if you're not doing your job, I'm going to explain to you how you need to do your job. Well, it's also too. I mean, who the hell is C.J. Stroud? Oh, I don't know.

Maybe a guy that had a record-setting rookie season and one offensive rookie of the year. That's just one example right there. And C.J. doing a podcast. CJ offering advice to kids on the field, any of those things. It's not the reason why this team's 7 and 5. This team is 7 and 5 because they have an offensive line. The offensive coordinator has taken a step back this year. CJ, by virtue of the offensive coordinator, taking a step back, has not had a good season because he's not confident in himself because he's not confident in the other two parts.

That's the reason there. And in terms of Damiko Ryans, I have zero issues with a coach treating his guys like professionals because that's how you stay employed in this league. All of this, oh, the way Jimmy Johnson did it, all the way Bill Belichick did it. Go back and ask Greg how players felt about Bill Belichick. Most players now are going out of their way to say they hated him. in reality is this. He wasn't the reason that they won. They won because of Tom Brady. You can't throw Gatorade bottles and you can't throw

coolers and you can't yell. I mean, you can yell at guys. That's going to be a natural course of a game day. But the best work that's done by a coach is done by stuff we don't see. And we all would like Domenicole be a little more glib than he is. But that's just who he is. And we have to trust that the things that are said when the microphones not turn on are things that are resonating in that room. Right now, there's some people leery of that,

like our previous caller because we're seeing the same mistakes being done over. It's a convenient thing to hang on to. Again, like I said, about the coach who is Mr. Ra Ra and the greeting card statements, all those things. Oh, well, that's why we're losing games right now. No, you're losing games because you can't stop committing penalties in crucial situations. Your offensive line can't block. And you can't do the things that are needed in order to be able to win games, which this team, for the better part of Domeko Ryan's tenure had been able to do.

All right. Final hour, Gordon is going to step in. I'm going to head off to Minneapolis. talk to you tomorrow from the Twin Cities, where it's like 30 degrees. Good luck. Rockets playing game tomorrow for the tournament. They win and they're probably going to go on to the knockout, right? I hear Bourbon helps with that, by the way.

During the game or before the game? I'm talking about with the cold. Very good. That's Dan. I'm Matt. Ross today is in Puerto Rico. We'll look forward to getting him back very shortly. Up next final hour, the Matt Thomas show with Ross here on Sports Talk 790. Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. Sox 790. It's the Matt Thomas show. Matt exiting stage right. Gordy, be stepping in here momentarily. Going to be with us for the next hour. Of course, it's the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Dean Matthews in for Ole Russell. He is out the rest of the week. Of course, going to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday. Come right back at you next week. So if you're missing Ross Villareale, well, never fear. He's not too far away. Again, if you want to get in on the phone lines, we'll continue the Texans conversation.

here in this 1 o'clock hour. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Once again, that's 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-7-90. Jacob, Scott, Matt, see you all right there if you want to join them on the phone lines. Again, 7-1-3-21-5-7-9-0. One quick Rockets note, though, of course, they're off tonight. They'll be back on the floor. You heard Matt mention it. As a matter of fact, that's where he's headed right now, up to Minneapolis. as they'll have an NBA Cup game against the Timberwolves tomorrow night. We'll have that, of course, right here on your home of the Rocket. Sports Talk 790.

Fred Van Vleet, thrown out of Saturday's game against the Portland Trailblazers, a frustrating loss for the Rockets. He's been fined $50,000 for confronting and directing profane language toward an officiating staff member at the end of the Rockets

104 and 98 loss to the Blazers. He is not going to be suspended. But the League handing that down. So 50 Gur is coming out of Fred Van Vleet's pocket. So that's a quick little rocket's note for you. Again, let's get back out to the phone lines. If you want to hop aboard, you can do so. Let's continue it with Scott, who wants to weigh in here on Sports Talk 790. Scott, what's up? Hey, how are you doing today? I'm what I believe the problem with these Houston Texans are that I'm noticing is a lack of preparation, a lack of

sensuous out there to do it and get a paycheck. So kind of winging it is what you're saying. Yeah, just, hey, mediocre, as long as I go out there and make a little bit of an effort, in the end, I'm getting paid anyway. I mean, I would never do that as a player, but that's what I feel like is that problem. But I want to say one more thing real quick, and I'll get off the air for you. Nothing upsets me more than a special teams player coming on the field and getting a penalty because of their attitude.

It drives me nuts just about as much as people celebrating mediocrity. And I'll get off the phone and listen to your comments on the air. Yeah, I'll get to that in a second. But what's the special team's penalty you're talking? Is he gone? All right. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know exactly what he's talking about on that front.

I'll start with your first one. I don't see effort being an issue for this team. As a matter of fact, I see it. team that does give effort. I just see a team that honestly just continues to make boneheaded mistakes and continues to make the boneheaded mistakes. And maybe that does go into preparation and everything else in terms of making sure you keep yourself out of those situations of pre-snap penalties and special teams penalties, all those different types of things. Sure, that's a different conversation. But in terms of the special teams ones, I mean, again, without 100% knowing what you're

talking about in terms of, you know, just being out of control. I didn't necessarily see that. I think there were a couple of holdings. What was it? The MJ Stewart one. I want to say that it was unnecessary roughness because basically it was a crackback block that he got one of the gunners on, which, again, that's an effort play. You're trying to keep a guy from getting near return man, fine, whatever.

It is also, though, too. I mean, to your point, Scott, maybe that is coming, you know, out of control at that point. You need to be more in your technique at that point and make sure that you don't commit that foul. That puts your team back towards your own goal line, which eventually we saw what happened there. But no, I mean, I think that it is kind of a situation of how much self-inventory is being taken inside that building. Like, I've brought it up numerous times today with Bobby Sloick. Like, you can try to tell us that there's no real difference between how you're being defended in the first half and in the second half. And it's at a point where I just don't believe you anymore because that's

obviously not true. You're scoring in the first half. You're not scoring in the second half. Like how has somebody not figured out at this point? Hey, you know, all right. So Detroit did this to us in the second half. New York did this to us in the second half. Green Bay did this to us in the second half. Why not start at the most basic levels of why did we lose the game? Like that should be just the honest, like starting off point, the foundation of why aren't you going back and looking at that and figuring out, hey, what did they do? How did they neutralize us? Like there's a reason why, and this is more prevalent on the college side during the off seasons, that coaches will bring in other coaching staffs. And especially too, there's a famous one when Tom Herman took the job at University of Houston after he just ran up and down the field against Alabama and Nick Sabin in that sugar bowl, Nick Saban brought him in and was basically like, how did you beat us? Like, what did you do?

Because he wasn't going to play against him when he was at U of H. So it wasn't necessarily a threat to either side. But that's the self-scouting that good teams do of trying to figure out why did we lose the game. How did we lose the game? And how do we not lose the game going forward? That's why Nick Saban was so good as a coach because he was able to diagnose why they did not perform the way that they should have in that game and tried to correct it. And there's a reason why in a lot of the rematches that he would have, he usually got the better hand in the other side

because he knew exactly what they did wrong and how to correct it and how to be able to use that against the other team next time. So maybe it's hard to do that during, you know, the end game, in week, you know, during the season. But it's also too at the same time. What the hell is the rest of the staff doing? Like there's a reason why there's guys in there

cutting up the film through digital cutups and you're able to go back and see, hey, all right, so this play, that didn't go our way. All right. You know, did we miss a block right there? I'm sure we did. All of these different things. And maybe that's being done.

And it's not being let out to us. But at the same time, though, as well, help yourself. Help yourself. Like, when Bobby has asked that question again this week, why are you so poor in the second half? Have an answer, Bobby. Like, even if it's the most generic of, yeah, we've diagnosed some things.

We see some things. You know, I'm not going to really get into that here. But to continue to try to tell us that there's nothing different from the first to the second half, you're really just insulting at everybody when you say that at this point because it's just patently not true. Jacob on the north side wants to weigh in here on Sports Talk 790. Jacob, what's up? What's up, man?

Hey, I think with the adjustments at halftime, I really don't understand that either. But they're not going to get rid of the offensive coordinator because it's only a second year. They won the division last year. they would have you know with a rookie coach and a and a second year quarterback i think that they still got a shot i don't know i had them at since i thought they'd be 10 and 7 11 and 6 let me ask you what did you think coming in the season if you don't mind sharing with me what do you think what do you thought that record would be this year i mean gordy i don't remember if we did the predictions like we did last year i said 7 and 10 yeah i said 7 yeah i said

seven and ten last year. Probably Jacob just offhand, maybe like 11 and 6. 11 and 6. Okay, they still got a shot. They're not going to win. They're not going to be Kansas City and the Ravens. I think they can be Kansas City. And I think the Ravens don't get them.

Kansas City is a skating on skin on thin nights. I don't know if they're bored until they get to the postseason. I think they already got the conference or the vision locked up. But the Texas is like fourth in the conference right now. Even though, you know, they're seven and five right now. They got a two league in the division. They are, you know what I mean, for some reason, they're not making adjustments. The old line is, they did a little bit better, I think.

With the turnovers they had, in the sacks they had, man, with the sacks they had, ain't no way they shouldn't win a game. But I think, you know, it's, you know, I think, I think in the second year, you know, they're going to make some adjustments, man. I think, I think, I think going forward, I think they're going in the right direction. They're not going to get rid of D'Amico. I know that for sure. And they're not going to get rid of the quarterback.

and not going to get rid of the O.C. So I think they can get a couple more of players that can contribute and whatever. And I think they're going to be all right, man. But I feel it, though. All right, man. I appreciate to call, Jacob. I mean, I think Gordy, if nothing else, just the quest in this season has been tried to put together a really good game where we're coming back in here on Monday and saying they finally look the way that we hope that they would. Like, and I've made the comparison so many times, and I did it again yesterday on Twitter.

the Texans offense is incredibly similar to what we were seeing about the Astros batting order this year, and especially with runners in scoring position. And the lack of the three-run homers, the lack of the huge extra base hit to be able to get guys home, it's basically similar to singles and solo home runs, which was basically the tale of the 2024 Houston Astros offense. You were three for 13 on third downs. I mean, to me, that tells me a story of your offense. right there. I mean, you cannot sustain. You can't keep drives alive. That's the, that's the

biggest problem. Now, the Titans were four for 14, so it's not like they were much better, but, you know, the turnovers are still a problem. You know, I said that before the season that I thought CJ's interception total was going to go up. This team, you know, as good as Nico Collins is, as good as Joe Mixon is, the offensive line has been a huge disappointment. And, and, you know, And they're missing Stefan Diggs. If they had, Stefan, I mean, there was a couple passes yesterday to, and really these last couple weeks, to Metchy and Xavier Hutchison, those guys are showing you they are not, they're not digs.

They can't fill that hole. So it's just inconsistencies. I thought the defense was a little bit more to blame to yesterday. I thought, you know, you suck a guy eight times, but you give 32 points. Like, that's boom or bust. Either you're getting a sack and forcing a negative play or are you giving up a huge positive play the other way. Ridley with a 63-yard play.

The tight end with the 70-yard play. Westbrookicino with a 38-yard play. I mean, 27-yard run for Tony Pollard. I mean, it was big play, big play, big play. And to be honest, Will Levis is not good enough to beat you. I just, I think they gave that game away yesterday. Well, I mean, we said it. I mean, you sack them eight times.

and some of those were on Will Levis. I would probably say half of them were because of his complete lack of pocket awareness and also even like running into a couple of those. But still, I mean, you did that. You picked them off. You ran it back for a touchdown. And not only all of that, the game before that you played at NRG Stadium, you lost to the Lions when you intercepted their quarterback five times.

You're owing two in both of those games. All right. So a lot of the focus is on the Texans offense. and continuity may be an issue on the offensive side of the ball. Somebody talked about that after the game. Yesterday will let you hear from them and react on the other side. It's Dan Matthews, it's Gordy. In for Matt and Ross.

Right here it is the Matt Thomas show with Ross, right here on Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas returns on Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. The only problem is the two parts of that. they're not here. Matt on his way up to Minneapolis. And Ross, he is in, I'm not even going to continue Matt's game. Just parts unknown. If you follow Ross on social media, you know where Ross is.

We'll just leave it that. But the constant, Connor D. McGovern, he's here. So we've got that going for us, which is nice. Mentioned offensive continuity maybe being an issue. And Renfro and Moe City get to you here in just a second. You want to join them? Do so. 713, 212, 5, 719.

Once again, that's 713-212-5-7-90. Seemingly the same questions have been asked, either win or lose, and either after a game, before a game, during the week, whatever it might be, the offense. What's the issue from half-one to half-two? Is it a continuity issue?

Well, D'Amico asked that very question yesterday after the loss of the Titans. The first thing is we have to create positive plays, right? Too many times, whether it's run or pass, we have a negative play, which it just kills our drive. So first thing first, how can we sustain positive plays and build drives? Too many drives were stalled out before we can even get started. Gordy, I understand checkdowns.

I understand all those things. You can't have the fourverts every single time. This isn't Madden. I get all of that. But I was thinking the same thing watching that game yesterday of screens to either, you know, Xavier Hutchinson, which, you know, I just threw his name out. I can't remember if he caught one.

But John Mechie to even a couple of times at least once to Cade Stover. I mean, you know, even Nico Collins, you know, one for him as well, where it's just kind of like, why are you trying to get so exotic here? Like the whole thing of, oh, well, they're never going to expect us to throw it to him on a screen. Well, there's a reason because they can just come right downhill. They can get you. And congratulations. Now you're in second and 12.

Now you're in second and 13, something like that. And it just seemingly has been an issue this entire season of the Texans just not being able to get good chunk yardage, even if it's not you getting a first down. Yeah, and I don't know what it is. It's the second half. They seem to be so good in the first half with the offense. I mean, shoot, what was this week? One play touchdown, you know, right out of the gates. But look at the drive chart in the second half.

three and out two and out with a pick three and out punt four plays field goal now that was off the the muffed punt right

so you had short feet four plays for seven yards still kind of how do you they handed you the ball on I don't know I don't know how you how you didn't

get more yards than that then you go seven plays 26 yards punt and then the seven plays the missed field goal, and then the end of the game, three plays safety and disaster at that point. I mean, really, this is a,

the second half, the offense just, it was too much three and out. It was too much not moving the football. And then when you finally did move the football, you know, the yips go to Kami Fairbair. And he misses the field goal. In a perfect world, he makes that. You know, we'll see what happens with, what was the less than a minute to go.

You know, Tennessee does anything with it. You're probably going to overtime. It just felt like much of the second half, felt like the Titans are playing above their head. They're playing better than they should. But I still felt like, well, but the Texans have been here so many times here lately. Right. I just expected, they're the better team. They're going to pull this out.

Let's just, I mean, in an ideal world right here, you know, the movie Mr. Destiny, hit the baseball in this case. All right. So the ball goes through the upright. Khamie makes the field goal. Texans tie it up. Maybe they give themselves an opportunity because you don't have the punt that backs you up to the eight yard line

because of the penalty. And you're able to go down the field. Kauimi kicks again and you win the game. Texans get out of there yesterday with a 33-30 win. We're still talking about the same things. But I think it's even exacerbated more on the defensive end because I think it was a little bit of some of the fears were realized. Like we were worried about how this team was going to be up front

on the defensive front and the defensive line yesterday. They got gashed by Tony Pollard. They also, too, even though they got to Will Levis eight times and sacked him eight times, you still had Will Levis being able to fine throws down the field and being able to have huge chunk explosive plays on you. Like those things are still a reality. Even if you win the game, if you win the game, it's more or less just cosmetic because, okay, hey, we're eight and four.

Things are getting better. we'll go to Jacksonville next week, hopefully get a win, we're nine and four, then we get into a tough part of our schedule. Like, the issues still remain the same. Yeah, and to me, the bigger issue here is look at Will Levis and his numbers. Last year, he made nine starts, I believe. As a starter this year, he made eight. Now, two of those games he left early with injuries. But eight games this year, nine games last year, he's got one 300-yard passing game.

that was last year against Miami. His second most passing yards in a game was last week against Minnesota, where a 2.95. Now, 98 of that came on one play. Yesterday, 278, if I'm looking at the stats here, right, which I am, that was the third most passing yards he's had in a start in the NFL. He's not good. So for Stingley to get busted on coverage, I mean, it's like,

what are you guys doing out there? Like do you almost wonder if the focus wasn't there because they're looking at? Shoot all week, what we're saying on the airways is all right, tough part of your schedule kind of out the way now. Now you've got to run off some wins here. I mean, this is the division. It sucks. It's the Titans. It's the Jaguars.

You had some of the players kind of alluding to that. I mean, I'm talking about how their energy was not good even at the start. And I'm sure probably, you know, a little bit of that resting on we're the better team. We can just go out here. We're going to beat them. It doesn't matter what they try to do. we're going to win this game. And that first play, I think, kind of fostered that feeling of, hey, we just ran the ball right down the field.

They can't even stop us on a kick return. And it looked like they were going to stop us way back at around the 20. And all of a sudden, we're inside their 20. And we just scored right there. This game's going to be easy. And quickly, after that first drive, good response by the Titans to be able to drive down the field, kick the field goal. But I think even after they kick the field goal, it's kind of like, all right, we can hold them to doing that when they have their opportunities. were going to be just fine today.

And then they were able to pop off a couple and be able to score. And it was just kind of a you didn't take it all that seriously. At least that's the way it's perceived. And you got the result that you got. Yeah, I just, again, I think also part of this is we also have to consider the fact that divisional games, it's hard to keep sweeping opponents. No matter how bad your division is, the problem is you see these guys, so often. There's a lot of familiarity there. And, you know, there's just a little something to it when you see this team every, you know, twice a year.

they take note of your tendencies. You take note of their tendencies. And so it's always the fact that we were all just assuming, oh, the division sucks, Texans will win this easily. Yes, but you really think every year you're just going to beat the Titans twice? You really think every year you're just going to beat the Jaguars twice? They're going to sneak up on you. Jags beat the Texans once last year.

I have no business doing it. Well, I mean, and also the other way, you did it to them when it looked like they were going to be the team to beat in the air. of C South, and I think that kind of got the confidence rolling in the right direction for the Texans of, hey, we just went on the road and beat a team that people think is going to be a playoff team, and we didn't only beat them. We beat them handedly, and we beat them in all three phases. So I think it can kind of work in the inverse order as well. Renfro and Mo City wants to weigh in here on Sports Talk 790. Renfro, what's up? Hey, Gordon, you know I have called several times, and I'm saying the same thing, and I'm going to say it again, Gardett. So he just having put together a full game plan. He's real good in the first half, second half. When teams make adjustments, they got him.

It started from last year when you played the Ravens, when the Ravens shut us down in the second half, and then teams have just jumped on the bandwagon on. After our first 15 strip plays look like, you know, we have nothing else to do, nothing else to lean on. because let me ask you this, Gordon, as an officer coordinator, you would think after your first 15 strip plays, you would think then you're getting the just of your office,

of what adjustments did the defense are made with you on your first 15 strip plays, then you would have to make an adjustment as the floor of the game goes. And I don't know if he's been able to get the flow of the game and draw plays as you go and you see the defense. setting especially if they you know playing safety high or whatever and how do you stick to that game plan but i really believe i think the commentators have already said it's that second half that we just haven't been able to uh conquer so i said and that's what you have to say

i appreciate the call renfro um i mean it is something that i've talked about as well you know gordy it's it's paralysis by analysis and i think that you're seeing that with some of bobby slox calls Last year I think that he was incredibly confident in himself because he was getting the immediate results. They were able to complete these long downfield throws. They were able to run the ball well enough with Devin Singletary for the most part. And, you know, Dari Gumbulli, here and there. Damien Pierce was kind of a disappointment at last year.

This year he's not been on the field. And you've been able to get the performances, at least in some individual games from Joe Mixen. But more often than not, it's been situations like yesterday. we can't run the football. And it happened against Detroit. It happened in some fashion against the Packers. And I mean, you know, it's kind of one of those you need to find a way to be able to keep your running game from being boom or bust. And that's been kind of one of the issues.

Again, continuity of I'm not expecting Joe Mixing to run for 100, 125 yards every single game. That's just not reality. It's not going to happen. But it also, though, as well, throw in some 60, 70-yard games. Like we're at least, hey, all right. Maybe he got stopped behind the line on that one. But then he picked up five or four on that one. Okay.

Like, there's not enough of a middle ground that this offense has sorely needed out of him and out of this offense as a whole. Yeah, I just, look, Sloick has been, it's not been great, but I think there's blame to go all around yesterday. You know, offense was not great in the second half. Kami Fairbair misses a gimmie kick that he's made a million times. I think the defense deserves some, you know, again, some blame here. And, you know, yes, D'Amico Ryan oversees it, but Matt Burke is the defense coordinator. What's Matt Burke doing? What adjustments is he making?

There's plenty of blame to go around. Yeah, we'll actually, you know, tap in a little bit of the defense on the other side. John and Pearland, I see that you want to get in on the offensive conversation as well. So we can carry those both over to the other side. Because speaking of the defense, somebody had some strong work. about how that group played yesterday. We'll let you hear from them. As we continue to roll along here,

it is the Matt Thomas show, Dan Matthews, and, excuse me, the Matt Thomas show with Ross. I don't want to leave out Ross. It's Dean Matthews, Chris Gordy, in for both of those guys. We'll continue right here, Sports Talk 790. Sports Talk 790. It's the Matt Thomas show with Ross.

Matt and Ross both out. Conardee McGoverns in. So you get me. My voice is Dan Matthews. His voice is Chris Gordy. So you've got us, for about another 25 minutes. The A team coming up and at your way 2 o'clock.

Two until six for those guys. No Rockets tonight as well, so we'll have a nightcap for you with me at 6 o'clock coming your way. Right here on your home of the Astros and the Rockets Sports Talk 790. Going to get something that Willie Anderson said after yesterday's game when Gordy, you know, you talked about it. The defense did not perform well in the game. And Willie Anderson might or might not disagree with you.

So we'll hear first from John and Pearland, who wants to wait in here on Sports Talk 790. John, what's up? Not much. So I find it hilarious that our head coach is blaming the defense on this loss when they got eight sacks and got a pick six and also forced two other fumbles to stop. And then, of course, the offense still hasn't scored a touchdown. You could say in seven games because it wasn't until the defense. blew the Cowboys game wide open that they finally scored in garbage time.

So I don't even count that. So you got a Pro Bowl left tackle, a rookie sensation that is now regressing. One of the best trios of wide receivers, even though Stefan Diggs got injured, you still had two of the three best trios in the league for a long, most of the season.

And yet you still can't score a single touchdown in the second half, even with some sort of fluke run play or anything of that sort. So I just find it hilarious. At this point that he's not calling out Bobby Slowick for his, you know, basically for having his head latched up his ass the whole season. John, John, before you go, like in terms of blaming the defense, I don't think he's putting this on the defense, but let's be honest here. I mean, I'll give you Tony Pollard's numbers here in a second, but 38-yard touchdown pass to Westbrook Aquine, and then you get a Conquo who goes 70 yards on a pass.

like explosive plays like that somebody's got to take the blame and the defense is the guys who are trying to defend that so you've got to say that they've got to wear it a little bit I would give them about 10% of the blame well I mean you're being generous to them on that because I think people would give a higher percentage but go ahead

I'm going to give a lower percentage just because how many times does the defense have to be on the field when the offense won't move the ball at all so it's another third and out another third and out, then a stupid, horrible throw by CJ. So now we got to stop them when they're starting at our 20. And then another one when they start at our 30. So they're already putting them in automatic field goal range, at least,

over silly turnovers. Right. So I think you're talking about more of like just a microcosm of the season, much more than just a game. I mean, yeah, a lot of the same issues played out in this game. So I get what you're saying. But, I mean, yeah, that's the way I'm kind of taking it from you. John, is that it's more of just a, hey, you know, we've kind of carried the water for you guys quite a bit.

And now you're going to, you know, put a little bit of it more on us for this one. Like, I think most of the guys in that locker room would agree. And some of the defensive players I talked with yesterday were saying, yeah, we didn't play well enough. I guess they held the defense to much higher standards than the offense, which is kind of hypocritical. That's my opinion. Because how many times do they have to stop someone on defense and then, oh, okay, now the offense is out? Okay, first down. Inside Zone run against the monster pair of defensive tackles that are stuffing the run all day long. Yeah, let's just keep doing that. Surely it'll work eventually, even though we're averaging a yard and a half per carry.

Let's just keep doing the same thing over and over again on offense and hope that it finally works. That's called insanity. When you're literally when your office coordinator is just insane or is too dumb to realize that, hey, the script is not working? juviate it from it a little. At least throw some long balls downfield and max protection and at least back off the defense before you try and just run it up the middle over and over again. Right.

No, I get it. John, we've got to move on. I appreciate the call. I mean, you know, Gordy, I talked about that earlier. I mean, it's been no secret of the blame that, you know, me and most of us have put on Bobby Sloick, and you weren't in here for it. I don't know if you were listening at the time that I said it's really coming down to hearing Bobby Sloick talk every week that I think one of two things is happening. I think either A, he doesn't know how to fix the problems that are coming their way

throughout games and primarily in the second half. Or B, he just doesn't even recognize what they are. I mean, it's kind of becoming evident to me that that's the point. And some of his answers, again, you know, it's you give me a minute and a half answer of why this isn't working and you didn't really give me a solution, then I probably got to lean on number two. It's like, then you can't diagnose it because you don't know what's going on. Yeah, I think a lot of this is rooted. It goes back to the offensive line, you know, not doing what they're doing. It's amazing.

I mean, they piecemeal this thing together last year and got through it with a, you know, half-ass offensive line. And this year, you were supposed to be stronger. You got, you know, tonsils back. healthy. Titus Howard's back healthy. Kenyon Green. Jack Mason, all these guys. Well, Kenyon Green, whatever. But, well, he was a guy

that you wanted to count on because he spent a first round pick on him. Well, but you can argue you were in a better spot, not having him out there. But, no, I mean, they're just, they're inconsistent, man. And yeah, those are some big boys up front is it Simmons and Tevondre Sweat for Tennessee. And they were eating your lunch. I mean,

one of those plays I saw on a short-yardage run play, Titus ours, Howard. just gets demolished by Tevondre sweat. You're not good enough. I mean, that's the bottom line. And then people talking about Tunsel being lazy and I don't know. I can, again, Bobby Sloat can call up all the greatest plays he wants. But if the offense vaughn don't execute, it's going to look like dog crap out there.

CJ's not going to have the time or, you know, it was an amazing run. We had, we had schemed up, but they didn't execute it. You know, it's like you can blame the play call or you want. Players still have to go execute it. Yeah, I mean, look, I've said it numerous times. You don't have a quarterback. You're dead in the water. You don't have an offensive line.

You're dead on land. Well, the Texans have been marooned on land quite a bit as of late. Nigel gets you here in just a second. But kind of to John's point right there about the defense. And like I said, some of the players in the locker room taking it upon themselves after yesterday's game. You had Willie Anderson just flat out saying after the game, we didn't do our jobs. They were a good team. The energy was low today.

and we didn't execute and finish like we needed to, and that was the biggest thing. We got to do us better. We got to be better. The Texans got to be better. And that's just all that can really be said. And, I mean, everything he just said right there is true. I think what fans probably also, with answers like that get annoyed with is it's mostly spoken in generalities.

Like, you want to know, say you got a friend of yours that continuously makes the same mistakes in life and you're frustrated with them. You're annoyed with them. And you ask them, hey, how are you going to change this? Like, what are you going to do to make sure that you stop ending up in situations like this? And they just, oh, well, you know, I'm just going to try to be better. That's not addressing the issue. Like, I think that more than anything, people want as much transparency as possible and you're not going to get a ton of it out of the NFL because you feel like if you say too much,

you're giving away too much. But, I mean, it's also, you know, it's like people are tired of hearing execution and, you know, oh, I got to own my job better and all these different types of things. I mean, it is kind of on one side, Gordy, like, what do you want me to say? But it is also, too, as well of it just doesn't really seem like you guys are getting to the root of the problem. Does that make sense? Yeah. Again, it's when everything is not going right, it's compounded and you're going to be sitting there.

Wonder why you're seven and five. And now, you know, the big question that everybody's putting out there is, you know, how many more wins are on the schedule? can they really go I mean three and two in my opinion is the goal you've got to go three and two over these last five you're you feel good about the going to jacksville you still got to go to tennessee see the same team again i feel good about that one but miami kansas city and baltimore could could all three be losses tough sledding for sure uh squeezing one more before we hit up believe it or not nigel and vancouver wants to weigh in here sports talk 790 nigel what's up oh good uh good morning thank you for taking my phone call I think that, you know, echoing the last caller and your comments,

this is a demoralizing loss that could only be placed at the feet of the coaching. Because I noticed that the dumb penalties, the sloppy play, which we became accustomed to on the offensive line, has now permeated into special teams, hence the muff punt, hence the missed field goal, etc. And, like, simple, my 30 minutes of pre-game analysis told me that Nixon was not going to be, be able to run up the middle. Yet that's exactly what they tried to do repeatedly and repeatedly. I keep coming back to the fact I've been a Texan fan for a long time.

This is a demoralizing loss. This team is going nowhere. Hey, appreciate the call, Nigel. Yeah, we've got to run pretty quickly here. But no, I mean, look, whenever you have issues, penalty-wise, I mean, just lack of execution and special teams, that usually is the mark of a bad football team because special teams, is the great equalizer in terms of do you win that game? You know, are you able

to pin them back deep on a punt? Can you cover the kickoff? Can you do really basic football things and the Texans at times have not? So that's why a lot of their issues still persist. All right, believe it or not, Chuck Woolery, that is the topic

for believe it or not today. If you want to join in for believe it or not and give yourself an opportunity to win, you can call 713-1-2-12-5-7-90. Once again, that's 7-1-3-1-3-1-7-90. Once again, that's 713-212-5-790. That's coming your way next as we close out this edition of the Matt Thomas show with Ross right here, Sports Talk 790. Houston's Sports Talk for lunch.

Matt Thomas returns on Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Dan Matthews, Chris Gordy, in for about 10 more minutes. The A team coming up next, Adam and Adam. So more chances for you to be able to react to the Texans lost yesterday to the Titans. believe it or not here in just a second, but Gerard on the west side wants to weigh in here on Sports Talk 790. Gerard, what's going on?

All right, too much, man. How are you guys doing? Good, man. Okay, quick thing on the Texan, man. Texan defense is good, but what's keeping it from being elite is they give up too many explosive plays until they clean that up, man. That defense is going to be one of those teams. Because they're good and not elite.

And when they play explosive offense, they're going to have problems. And then I go, you guys come in as far as the office line go, The offensive line has not been good all year. That's been the Killies Hill of the Texans offense all year. We can blame's Floyd. He's not had a great deal of play calling, but it all starts in the trenches. Man, if you're not strong in the trenches, you have a cap on your success as a football team.

And I think they're really struggling on the offensive line. I think those are issues that they can't. It's not going to be addressed during the season. They're going to have to be addressing an offseason via free agency and or the draft. I think that's the main issue. And quick thing on special teams, the guy, MJ Stewart, it was horrible. He called the Texan's field position on a couple

of penalties on a special team that rarely hurt the Texas, man. That guy is not valuable enough to make those type of mistakes and still stay on the team. So I agree with a call that came in, a little earlier saying that if that was Jimmy, Jimmy Johnson, he found it be cut now, man, because he was horrible. Well, it was too bad pill that

really hurt the checkers' offense starting their drives. I appreciate the call, Gerard. I mean, yeah, up front, that's, I mean, Damico says it all the time. You're only as good as you are up front and at least on one side they've been pretty good probably better than expected and on the other they've been just not good at all they've been awful and uh you know also to the explosive plays those are going to happen but it is also to the frequency of them yesterday and allowing a

not so great running attack to get going yesterday i mean that's all part of it and yeah special teams miscues we've done it all but five minutes left to go on the show you know it's due We will play America's fastest growing game show. I think I'm kind of nailing it right here. Maybe you're not. I don't know. I just don't want to step on Matt's gimmick too much. Like that's Matt's.

Like the whole telling you what's next with Clanton and Wexler. We'll get to that in here in just a second. But you got to do those. We simply call it, believe it or not. All right. There you go. And Matt's how it works? He's the, yeah.

So here's how it works. We're going to give you a question. And if you think that it is correct, you will say. believe it. And if you think it's bunk, you will say. All right, there you go. Errone is full of bunk and made up. There you go. All of those. Everything in between. Connor, what are we planning for? We got one more pair of tickets to see Howard Jones in ABC Live, February 17th at the House of Blues and a 790 t-shirt.

I like it. All right. So we got a couple more spots open. If you want to jump in, you can do so. 7-13-1-2-12-790. What's today's topic? Today's topic is Chuck Woolery. So RIP, the former host of Love Connection. and a former resident of where my parents live. Original host of Wheel of Fortune, I believe. That's correct. That's correct.

And Matt had all the historical nuggets and some of them here too as well. Roger in Houston wants to play. Roger, what's going on? Not a whole lot, man. All right, you ready to go? All right, here we go. Question number one,

Woolery was a singer in a band called Avant-Garde who had a top 40 hit in 1968 called Naturally Stone. it or not? Not? Believe it. Incorrect. Sorry, Roger.

Better luck next time, buddy. Let's continue on. Joe wants to play, Believe it or not. Joe, what's going on? Same old thing, different day. There we go. I like it.

All right. Question number two, question number one for you. Woollery was the first host of Wheel of Fortune and was fired in 1981 because he was having an affair with show creator Merv Griffin's oldest daughter, Amanda.

Believe it or not? Oh, my goodness. Believe it? No, he just wanted to raise. That's all it was. He wanted to go from the high-paying salary of 65,000 Gordy to 500,000.

At least that's what Matt... In 1981, that's a ton of dough. That is a ton of dough. So, 0-4-2, out the gate. Let's see if Kevin and Katie can be able to turn the tide here. Kevin, what's going on? Oh, not much. Ready play, believe it or not. I like it. I like the energy.

All right. Question number one for you. The television show, that Woolery hosted the longest was Scrabble, which lasted seven plus seasons. Oh, believe it. Ah, sorry, buddy. It was Love Connection, 11 years. Boy, Matt actually is throwing some zingers today. This is pretty good stuff from now.

Yeah, I'm liking it. But I think, Hey, Zeus is going to be able to break us off the Schneide here. We're over for three. Hey, Zeus, are you ready to play? Believe it. I like it. All right. Question number one, Woolery loved to act and was a guest star on Love Boat,

eight times during this series run. Believe it or not. Believe it. Ah, dang it. Nope, Matt just made that up. Oh, good. Still got a chance if you want to be able to give one last crack at it, 7-13, 2-1-2-5-7-90.

Once again, that's 7-1-3-21-2-5-7-90. We can maybe squeeze in one more right there, but yeah. I'm surprised. So we had Howard Jones, the ABC. Isn't that right? Yep. And also to a 790 T-shirt. So, you know, hey, look, Cousin Eddie told Clark that that's the gift that keeps on giving.

Yeah. I think I'd rather a subscription to the jelly of the month club. You'd want a jelly of the month club. There you go. Well, you know, the boss said no more raises this year. So, all right, well, we go over today. Better luck tomorrow. Matt will be hosting so you get all your hygiene, everything back with them.

I just look, you know, I can't fake it too much. Maybe that's like, you know, hey, that's why you're never going to host Wheel of Fortune. We'll leave it to Ryan Seacrest. Gordy, it was fun. man enjoyed it. Yeah. Are you back in tomorrow? I'm back in tomorrow.

So the full four with Matt and then you for Wednesday, right? Yeah. So there you go. Matt on the road and both of those, right? There you go. There you go. You know it. So that's what you got.

All right. So Matt's done. I'm done. Gordy's done. But I'm not completely done because up next, it's Clanton. It's Wexler. It's the A team. They're next right here, Sports Talk 790.