Smith on Texans loss to Titans: “It was bad football”

There are a lot of questions, and right now, it doesn’t seem that Lovie Smith has the answers.

The Texans were thoroughly dominated at the line of scrimmage on both sides by a one-dimensional divisional rival.

The Houston Texans followed their best offensive performance in Week 7 with an absolute failure of an effort in Week 8. The defense could not stop the Titans in the second half despite the fact the Titans made no attempts to hide the fact they were not going to throw the football (rookie quarterback Malik Willis threw one pass the entire second half). It left head coach Lovie Smith with a lot of questions that he just doesn’t seem to have answers to.

Despite his attempts to do his best to stay professional, Smith’s frustrationwas showing in his postgame conference.

“When you get dominated on both sides of the football, I’m talking about, upfront, it’s going to be a tough day. It was bad football today we played, and you end up with a game like that. You look at the score, and you say, ‘Hey, you had a chance to win.’ Never really were in it. Early on, of course, the interception was big, where we had a little momentum to be able to get something going then. Good play on the punt return to get the ball out. Good play by Steve Nelson to intercept the ball. But besides that, just not a whole lot to talk about. Defensively we haven’t been able to really stop the run all year, and today that definitely showed up. And on the other side of the football too. We say we want to run the football, and it’s hard to get anything going when you can’t run it.”

Smith didn’t seem to have any answers for the run defense or what they could do to improve it:

“Just like we’ve been doing after other days where we haven’t played as well. Short week, so it’s not like you can do an awful lot. Going to heal up. Hopefully get a few guys back. We’re a little shorthanded now and try to do a better job. We knew who we were playing. One of the best backs in the game. That physical brand of football, we weren’t ready to play that today.”

He chalked up the missed tackles to being “one of those days”:

“We’ve been getting back to the fundamentals. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen, simple as that. We practice each week. Believe it or not, we go over the fundamentals. Some days you miss tackles. Today was one of those days.”

As far as how the offense went from its best performance to its worst in one week, Smith admitted his team was physically dominated up front:

“It starts up front, you know, my initial statement. When you get dominated up front on both sides of the football, part of the game plan, I mean, it’s hard to get any game plan going. Offensively for us, if they’re in our backfield every time, you can’t run, you can’t pass the football. So every question you can ask me, it’s going to come back to that. We’re dominated up front, can’t run our pass in those situations. And defensively, when it’s easy, we have a starting quarterback out, when you can turn and hand the ball off, and you can’t tackle, it’s going to be a game like that.”

The head coach said his team just wasn’t prepared offensively for situations where they couldn’t run the football:

“It’s just tough all the way around. Part of the game plan was to get in favorable third-down situations, but that kind of started up front. When you can’t run the football, it’s pretty obvious down and distance on what we have to do. That’s just tough. We weren’t set up today to be able to handle some of that.”

Smith once again found himself having to deflect on questions about another subpar effort from QB Davis Mills, who had only 64 yards passing until the Texans’ final drive of the game:

“I’m going to say it’s tough duty when you get dominated up front. It’s tough duty for that. Davis (Mills), I know we want to pick Davis out, but it’s everything. We didn’t run the football the way we’ve been running it. So that was a part of it too. We did not; the Houston Texans, our football team, under my leadership, did not play well today in all areas. That’s the good thing about playing a Thursday game, as I see it, back to that Thursday question. When you play like that, you’re anxious to get back out there. I know we’re better than that.”