DeMeco Ryans on the Texans defensive line
This was the clearest bounce-back on the sheet, and Ryans started with his edge.
"Starting with Will, I thought Will did an outstanding job and all those guys just collectively, they got after the quarterback, got some good pressure on them," Ryans said of DE Will Anderson Jr. and the group around him. "That's what we're used to seeing from our defensive front. They did a good job of bouncing back, applying pressure on the quarterback."
He was explicit about the effort level: "Proud of the effort, proud of the fight that those guys showed."
Texans defense on forcing turnovers
Ryans then put the next objective on the board himself, with no prompting and no ambiguity.
"For us defensively, we have to find a way to take the ball away," he said. "This is our second week in a row we have not taken the football away, so for us to help the team defensively win the football game, we have to find a way to get more turnovers."
That's a clean, measurable Week 3 target for a unit already generating the pressure that creates them.
Field position and the Texans' complementary football
Ryans connected the defensive workload to the phase around it.
"Their offense was able to start at midfield more than we would like them to. We want teams to try to drive the field on us," he said. "We have to do a better job right there of winning the field position battle every time we go out there with our special teams. We have to return it better. We have to eliminate the silly penalties and we have to be able to make our kicks."
Fix the starting spot, keep the rush, and the takeaways tend to follow.
