Lovie Smith ready to get Texans back to work

The Texans’ head coach wants to build off their Week 5 win.

Monday, Houston Texans head coach Lovie Smith addressed the media for the first time since the bye week and expressed that the bye week gives everyone a chance to not only refocus their energy on getting things right on the field but allows them to clear their minds off the field as well:

“Whenever you get to bye week, there’s a lot of things you want to get accomplished. We were able to do that last week. Just kind of analyze, critique everything we’ve done up until this point, and make the necessary adjustments, even though you’ve been doing that all along. Part of it, too, is to get away, just recharge the battery, become a fan, which I was able to do. My wife MaryAnne and I had a great time seeing our flagship university compete and play well and then just watch the NFL games that happened to kind of see how we fit. A lot of the teams you get a chance to watch, of course, we’re getting ready to play later on. To go out and to go into a bye week on a win also did a lot for our team. It was good to get back today, though, get back to the practice field. Part of bye week is you get an extra day to start preparing. For the Raiders, long history, what they mean to our league, they’re in a similar situation, been in every game and had an opportunity to win every game, but it hasn’t happened as much as they liked. For us, to keep that momentum going is really important.”

Before finally getting in the win column in Week 5, the Texans struggled to close out games and were inconsistent in their play. Coming back from the bye, Smith reiterated the team needs to execute and finish strong:

“First, just finish. We’ve had our moments offensively, defensively, and special teams-wise. I don’t like the way we’ve finished the games as much as anything. We’ve had our opportunities. What we’ve been able to see this first quarter of the season is what you normally see. You go through the preseason, but you still don’t get a chance when it really counts. I think that’s where we are right now. I have a better idea of exactly where everybody should be position-wise and how we go forward. We had so many opportunities early on, but that’s a part of the growth, too, to figure out how to finish a game. I think you have to go on how we finished the first quarter of our season. We were able to do that against a division opponent on the road. That momentum that we built up from that last game, hopefully, that’s what we’re going to carry on to this one.”

The Texans head coach believes the team is making progress, and needs to tighten a few things up:

“We have a belief in our system on what we do, and if it’s not working exactly the way you would want it to, you keep practicing it. Eventually, it gets better. That’s where we are. That’s what I saw before the bye week. That’s what we’ve seen right now, as you look at what we’ve done, our running game, first game, ‘Hey, we need to get more carries for our tailback.’ We’ve done that. We need to commit more to who we say we are. I think we’ve done all of those things. Now, it’s just tightening up a few of the bolts as we go forward.”