HOUSTON -- J.J. Watt summed up the way the Houston Texans’ defense played in Sunday’s loss to the Chicago Bears quickly: “I think our performance was embarrassing.”
“We gave up 36 points today,” Watt said. “... We’re not competitive. We gave up 36 points.”
It was the latest example of a poor performance from the Houston defense. The Texans fell to 4-9 and were officially eliminated from the AFC playoff race.
“We had a pretty good idea of that before this game,” Watt said when asked about the team's officially not making the playoffs for the first time since 2017, when quarterback Deshaun Watson was out because of a torn ACL.
While the Texans have felt out of playoff contention since they fell to 0-4 and fired head coach and general manager Bill O’Brien in October, the bigger question is where does their porous defense go from here?
The Texans won’t opt for a full roster overhaul because they have Watson and don’t have the necessary draft picks in 2021 to do so, but there are going to have to be a lot of changes to this defense before it can carry the team in games. This defense is a far cry from the unit that was led by Watt before Houston had a franchise quarterback.
The biggest change could be with Watt himself. He has one season left on his current contract and is owed $17.5 million next season, a salary that is not guaranteed. Although Watt has meant so much to this franchise, it might make sense for a team that is not close to being a legitimate contender to trade him this offseason. The Texans could save that money and perhaps acquire an important draft pick that could help them with their rebuild on defense. Watt, 31, could go somewhere he has a better shot at winning.
After the loss, Watt was asked whether he has thought about his future with the team, given how this season has gone. He said he is “always thinking about everything,” and “now I’m thinking about what just happened, and I’m not happy about it by any close stretch of the imagination.”
Even if Watt returns, there are so many questions on this defense, and there isn’t a lot of promising talent to build around. The Texans’ 2019 season ended in the playoffs at Kansas City when the Chiefs scored 41 unanswered points, thanks to Patrick Mahomes and the Texans’ struggling secondary. Houston didn’t do much to improve that part of the defense this past offseason, and it has continued to be a problem in 2020.
Perhaps the position that will require the most overhaul is cornerback. With Bradley Roby suspended for the remainder of the season (and the first game of 2021), Gareon Conley on injured reserve and Phillip Gaines and rookie John Reid out because of injuries Sunday, Vernon Hargreaves and Keion Crossen were Houston’s top two cornerbacks.
Only Roby, Crossen and Reid are under contract for next season, and because Roby was suspended for violating the NFL’s policy on performance-enhancing substances, his guaranteed salary can be voided for next season, according to Over the Cap. If Houston wants to move on from Roby, it could save more than $8 million against an already tight cap. However, Roby has been good enough to merit his place, and the Texans would have yet another hole to fill at the position.
The Texans’ game against the Bears was billed as a matchup of Watson and Mitchell Trubisky, who were both taken in the first round of the 2017 draft. Watson is considered the greater talent, but Trubisky -- benched earlier this season for journeyman Nick Foles -- came out on top Sunday in a game that showed why Houston’s front seven is in trouble going forward. The Texans sacked Trubisky three times Sunday, two of them by safety Eric Murray, but Watt said it was clear that the defense “never made him uncomfortable.”
For the second game in a row, outside linebacker Whitney Mercilus barely showed up on the stat sheet. Although interim head coach Romeo Crennel said last week that that could be because Mercilus is “in coverage a little bit more than the other guys are,” and “that’s valuable to us at this time, so we have to do with what we have and try to make the best use of it,” the Texans are paying the linebacker $12 million per season. Mercilus has four sacks this season.
After the loss to the Bears, Crennel was asked to describe the way the Texans played, especially the defense.
“It was uninspired,” he said.
Houston has nine months until it plays its next meaningful game, but the challenge before then will be to figure out how to improve this defense without a lot of resources.