Game Recap: Texans vs Patriots

Thursday Night Football (or Friday morning because Australia)

Houston Texans take on the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium. Patriots win in a shut out 27-0.

With the Patriots starting their second qb of the season, rookie Jacoby Brissett, they looked to continue their strong form over the AFC Souths number 1 contender, The Houston Texans. Boy, did they continue their strong performances.

After losing Jimmy Garoppolo to a shoulder injury, Brissett took the reins of a potent Patriots offence that looked radically different to what we have seen from Belichick before. Using an option style run game, to utilize Brissett’s mobility and LeGarrette Blount’s bruising running game, and short passes, they gashed arguably the league’s best defence in the Texans. JJ Watt was unable to impact the game in his usual style, and Belichick out coached the Texans in every facet of the game.

Brissett finished with 11 of 19 for 103 yards and 8 rushes for 48 yards and a TD. Blount overpowered the Texans defence, rushing 24 times for 105 yards and a pair of TD’s (fantasy owners will rejoice as he scored 22 points this week).

On the other side the Texans failed to generate any sort of momentum in the run game that they committed to, rushing a total of 24 times and only being able to generate 109 total rushing yards. Even when taking to the air it seemed that the Patriots knew all the plays that the Texans were going to call, with 41 attempts Osweiller completed only 24 of them for 196 yards and 1 intercept (which was a beautiful read from Patriots Linebacker Jamie Collins).

The most terrifying thing to note in this game is that the Patriots star quarterback, Tom Brady, is back next week following the final game of his “Deflategate” suspension. This win was also accomplished without the pro bowl start tight end, Rob Gronkowski, as he was drastically limited by the coaching staff, coming back from injury. However, some questions do remain: Have the Texans shown that Osweiller wasn’t worth as much as his contract indicated? Is their defence as formidable as the offseason promised? Or does it all come down to the fact that Bill Belichick is the greatest mind to ever coach an NFL team?

Tune Into the podcast to hear our predictions for the rest of the week and some viable fantasy pickups to replace an ever diminishing field of running backs.