The Houston Texans and Los Angeles Chargers met with both teams already in trouble. Houston came in at 2-5, while Los Angeles opened 0-7, and the matchup carried the feel of two clubs trying to stop a season from slipping away before midyear.
That is why Texans Vs Chargers was suddenly being searched like a crisis instead of a matchup. Justin Herbert has five touchdown passes and 10 interceptions this season, and he has not thrown a touchdown pass in the past two games. In those same two games, he has also completed three passes to the other team. For a team that was supposed to be more stable than this, the numbers were hard to ignore.
The Texans were supposed to lean on a defense built to carry them, but that side of the ball has not held up the way expected. Houston was allowing 24.3 points per game and 244.0 passing yards per game, while also carrying the fourth-worst running game in football. At the same time, the Texans had one of the best passing offenses, which only sharpened the contrast between what they can do well and what keeps pulling them back.
The Chargers were dealing with their own problems, and they were not small ones. The offense had gone 10 straight quarters without a touchdown, and it had found the end zone in only one of the past 12 quarters they played. That kind of stretch explains why the record is so ugly and why the search interest around this game is tied less to standings than to whether either team can still look like the group people expected in the first place.
There is a wider reason this matchup landed with weight. Houston entered the game with expectations of one of the league’s better defenses, yet its passing defense had become a weakness. Los Angeles, meanwhile, was being talked about as a team with poor offense and defense and as one that was unlikely to make the postseason. Herbert is still the face of the Chargers’ problems, but the issue is bigger than one quarterback. The question left by Texans Vs Chargers is whether either team can turn a bad start into something salvageable before the season moves past them completely.
