What's Wrong With the Texans Secondary

@ Lbking / Wikimedia commons

Without sounding too cliche, I think perhaps the question should be: What ISN'T wrong with it? If you have been keeping up with the Texans all year, you've painfully noticed how easy it is for opposing Quarterbacks to throw against a very week Texans secondary.

Callers into sports radio shows and the media keep blaming it all on young corners Kareem Jackson, Glover Quinn and Brice McCain, but the truth of the matter is that the problems go way beyond the corners. From the guys up front to the safeties to the coaching, everyone is to blame just as much as the corners. The Texans are having to run a lot of zone coverage partially because the young corners don't have the experience to match up man to man with top wide receivers. That said, the corners are actually doing well at covering the flats and hook zones from the line of scrimmage to about 10 or 12 yards off of it.

The problem of wide receivers becoming wide open down the field is more of an issue with the safeties in a cover 2 scheme, which it looks like the Texans run a lot of. Against the Giants, Pollard was out of position quite a bit on the long plays and much of the blame should be being put on him rather than Jackson.

In Cover 2, a receiver is the corners responsibility until he reaches about 10 yards or so. At that point, the safety on that corners side of the field is supposed to assume coverage responsibility of the receiver down-field freeing up the corner to stop the outside run, screen or dump off pass to the flat. For some reason all season our safeties are not picking up receivers in the transition when they leave the corner's zone. This miscommunication leaves a gap in coverage and receivers wide open 10-15 yards down the field and deeper, which we have seen all year long.

Tight Ends over the middle of the field can be even more confusing because the miscommunication happens between a linebacker who is often too slow to cover very deep and a safety who is usually having to split the difference between a streaking outside receiver and a tight end making his way down field. This is when a guy like Cushing really helps because his speed enables him go man to man against the tight end when the defensive coordinator isn't sending him on a blitz.

It all comes down to a chemistry issue. To fix the problem, not only are the corners and safeties going to have to play better in general, but they need to learn a little chemistry so that that transition period between zones is covered a little tighter. On top of that, the defensive line HAS to get pressure on quarterbacks in order to force them to make their decision earlier. As is, QBs are having all day to find a receiver down the field and that almost never ends well.

It all comes down to Kubiak and his staff...let's hope they do some coaching up on these guys and we see some improvement.

PS - It really would help to bring in a veteran like Ty Law to help teach the young guys, but Kubiak is too proud to do that. As a Texans fan - THAT IS REALLY FRUSTRATING.