The Houston Texans clinched a victory over the San Francisco 49ers 24-13 in their first preseason game. According to head coach Bill O’Brien the team executed three major keys that resulted in a win. “We won the turnover battle, we won the field position battle and we won the penalty battle,” O’Brien explained on Monday.
Highlights of Sunday night’s game include Texans players coming through with a couple clutch fumble recoveries. In the first quarter, John Simon, an outside linebacker for the Texans forced a fumble and ran 41 yards for a touchdown. Then safety Kurtis Drummond managed to retrieve a 49ers fumble at the 2-yard line.
Quarterback Brock Osweiler had four completions for 27 yards after attempting seven passes. Osweiler’s longest completion was a 12 yard pass to C.J. Fidorowicz. Osweiler was operating behind a line that was missing three of its main blockers dealing with injuries that includes Duane Brown, Derek Newton and Nick Martin. This resulted in a sack by right tackle Kendall Lamm and an overall lackluster performance.
“Like he said after the game, we kept it pretty close to the vest,” said Coach O’Brien. “We ran the ball quite a bit. We threw some quick game. He had one fade ball to DeAndre that was close. The DB made a really good play on it.
O’Brien spoke about where he saw room for improvement in terms of completions, “That’s an area that I’m talking about in the beginning here that we really need to work on because that’s a very big threat for us, our opportunity to throw the ball versus press coverage to DeAndre. So, we’re going to continue to work on that. I thought he made a nice throw to C.J. We’re just going to keep working.”
The Texans still have some areas they need to improve on but it definitely doesn’t hurt to start the preseason off with a win in the books.