A telling stat in Sunday's 26-3 victory over the Jaguars, came in the run game.

Houston rumbled for 216 yards, averaging 6.4 yards a carry. The Texans defense, meanwhile, held the Jaguars to just 74 yards, and Leonard Fournette averaged 3.6 yards per carry.

Keeping quarterback Gardner Minshew in the pocket was one major goal of the Texans defense. Head coach Bill O'Brien explained another one.

"To try to do the best we can to stop Fournette, who is the leading rusher in the NFL, or second-leading coming into the game," O'Brien said. "We did a decent job of that. They completed some passes. Fournette had a couple runs but, overall, I thought our guys played good team defense and then we were able to take the ball away, which was big."

Because the defense forced Minshew to throw the ball 47 times, Fournette was only given 11 carries. Texans receiver DeAndre Hopkins liked what he saw Sunday, and said he's accustomed to such success after working against the defense during the week of work.

"Defense is going to do great," Hopkins said. "To me, I love practicing against those guys. They make us better. I knew the way we prepared this week that the defense was going to go out and do their job and everybody's attention to detail was really high today."

Carlos Hyde peeled off a pair of explosive runs, going for 48 yards in the third quarter and then 58 yards in the fourth. In all, six of his 19 runs went for five yards or more, and he finished the day with 160 yards on 19 carries.

It was his finest performance as a Texan, and his sixth career 100-yard rushing performance. He was quick to point out who deserved a lot of the credit.

"The offensive line," Hyde said. "They did a good job creating holes and just letting me run."

Quarterback Deshaun Watson liked what the ground attack was able to do, and described the effect it had.

"It just opening up everything," Watson said. "Every offense starts with the run. If you can run the ball and establish the line of scrimmage it creates everything, slows down the pass rush, slows down the blitz package, everything that they want to do. So, every offense wants to be able to run the ball and it opens everything else up."

The Texans will have next Sunday off, and then they'll face the Ravens in Baltimore the week following.