As hard-hitting with his words as he is with his 6-1, 224-pound frame against opposing receivers, strong safety Bernard Pollard discussed on Thursday how the Texans' defense can get the team back in the win column this week.
"We need to be sound in our game," Pollard said in an interview in the Texans' locker room. "We have to show up and show out. We can't show up and pee down the leg. I really believe in the last four weeks, we've got to put it on the line."
Pollard, who has started nine consecutive games and will be featured on the cover of the Texans Gameday magazine this Sunday, was asked to elaborate on that statement. And elaborate he did.
"It's just as far as showing up," he said. "As a team, we have to be able to come together. Sitting at 5-7 right now, the way things have been in the NFL, you never can count yourself out. I actually was just watching TV (before) going into meetings this morning, and we're still in there. Even if we weren't, I just think us showing up for our own sake… We show up to pick up our checks – we look at our bank account and we know that the money is in there, so I think we need to show up and play.
"The last four weeks, it has been not us out there. You see flashes of things going on and you see flashes of goodness from the team, but you don't see it for four quarters. And we need to kind of iron out that bad in us. We have to iron it out, because it can't be with us.
"I really believe, like I said before, we've been sick the last four weeks, and it's the illness called losing. And we just need to take some of that medication, it's an antibiotic, it's a shot, it's something that we need to take, and I think guys' eyes are open. You see that this team has never been to the playoffs, you see that this team has done things to be in the playoffs. But we don't do it for a long period of time. So I think that we're going to show up. And the thing about showing up, we've got to show out with it."