“It’s hard to win football games when you can’t finish,” said Houston Texans head coach Lovie Smith. “That’s the core of it and we have to fix that. Defensively we can’t stop the run, we’re giving up big plays, and offensively we’re turning the ball over and turning it over in the endzone."
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The Texans are having a fourth quarter problem.
In all three games the Texans have played this year, they have held a second half lead and have either led or been tied with their opponent in the fourth quarter.
Yet, the Texans hold an 0-2-1 record, and have scored just a grand total of zero points through three fourth quarters and an overtime so far this year.
It’s a disturbing trend for Houston, as the team could easily have a 3-0 record and be atop the AFC South through three weeks, but instead sit without a win and in last place in the division.
“It’s hard to win football games when you can’t finish,” said Houston Texans head coach Lovie Smith. “That’s the core of it and we have to fix that. Defensively we can’t stop the run, we’re giving up big plays, and offensively we’re turning the ball over and turning it over in the endzone. That kind of stuff really hurts us. We have to sustain drives, we’ve had our opportunities, we just can’t finish.”
The biggest problem for the Texans in the fourth quarter has been the offense. Through three games, the Texans are averaging just 3 yards per play in the fourth, and things got to their lowest point on Sunday, when Davis Mills threw an interception with under two minutes left in the game while the Texans and Bears were tied, giving the Bears the ball in the shadow of the Texans endzone and all but handing Chicago the win.
“We have to execute at a higher level,” Mills said. “At this point, I don’t think we are a team where we can come back from a lot of mistakes if we make them. We just have to execute at a high level from the start. We have to start fast and we have to finish. Winning is learned and we have to feel that as a locker room. We have to play a full game and start building momentum. There’s a long season ahead of us and we’re ready for it, we just have to take it one week at a time.”
Mills has struggled this year but the Texans have been in every game because of a strong running attack and a defense that has held its own against every opponent thus far. But if the Texans are to make strides and improve upon last year, the fourth quarter issues must be fixed, and Davis Mills has to be better in late game situations.
“We’ve lost three winnable games, three games where we had fourth quarter leads, we could easily be 3-0,” Smith said. “Glass half full, is we are close, but the reality is that we still could be far away because these issues have happened three weeks in a row and you can’t win that way. Our special teams was good yesterday, but offensively we need more. We didn’t convert on four third-and-ones, we had two critical interceptions and if you defensively we have to be able to stop the run.”
The Texans will have a chance to bounce back this week as they face a beaten up Chargers team that comes off a loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, where the team struggled mightily on both offense and defense. Now the Texans have to do what they did last year and hand the Chargers a loss at NRG Stadium.
“We’re going to keep doing the things we believe in, but we’re going to do them better,” Smith said. “We believe in things and we’re not going to tear that down and start from scratch, but we have to get better at it. We’re three games into this 17 game regular season, we just have to keep improving.”