Stopping the run has been a big problem for the Houston Texans the past two seasons with consistent bottom-10 finishes in both yards per game and yards per carry.
Last season featured Houston finishing worst in the NFL with 170.2 rushing yards surrendered per game. The Texans were fourth-worst in the league at 5.1 yards per carry surrendered.
Rookie coach DeMeco Ryans won’t be avoiding the problem. One of Ryans’ chief tenets is to ensure the opposition can’t have their way on the ground.
“My philosophy on stopping the run is you have to,” Ryans said June 14 after mandatory minicamp. “You have to do everything possible to stop the run — that’s the first thing first. That’s the goal for our defense — make teams one-dimensional, make them have to drop back and pass the ball.”
Ryans spent the past two seasons as the San Francisco 49ers’ defensive coordinator. The 49ers were tied with the Tennessee Titans for the lowest yards per carry surrendered last season with 3.4, and had the second-lowest rushing yards per game surrendered with 77.7.
Although there were limitations as to how much on-field work the defense could get in related to stopping the run, Ryans acknowledged the proper defense began with mindset; they didn’t need a relaxation in the collective bargaining agreement to allow tackling to instill the significance of run defense.
Said Ryans: “In these OTAs and minicamp, you can’t be as physical as we would like to be when it comes to stopping the run just because of the nature of where we are with shorts and helmets — just can’t be as physical as possible. Stopping the run is going to start with the mindset, it’s going to be the mindset of being the most physical team and playing on the other side of the line of scrimmage.”
If the Texans are able to get their run defense out of the basement, it should go a long ways towards getting the team as a whole out of the rebuild.
