After Houston defeated the Los Angeles Chargers 32-12 in the opening game of the NFL playoffs on Saturday, Texans coach DeMeco Ryans began his locker-room talk to his team by saying: “Outstanding job by everybody. How was that bye week?”
Ryans was referring to a remark by ESPN commentator and former New York Jets coach Rex Ryan about the first-round matchup on “Get Up.”
“I never realized the Chargers got a bye, that they qualified for a bye,” Ryan said, “but they did because they’re playing Houston.”
After the game, Houston defensive end Will Anderson Jr., a two-time consensus All-American at Alabama, pulled out a favorite phrase from his former coach Nick Saban to explain the Texans’ attitude.
“It’s just outside noise,” Anderson told Josina Anderson. “It’s rat poison that you can’t listen to. We hear it, of course. You’d be a fool to say, ‘Oh, you don’t hear anything.’ But we most definitely heard it. We took it on the chin, and we’re like, ‘OK, we got y’all. If that’s what y’all want to say, that’s what we’re going to do.’
“And, man, we went out there and we played our brand of ball. We started to our standard, our expectations. Nobody tried to do anything extra. Everybody just played the system.”
Neither the Texans nor the Chargers had a playoff bye. That belongs to the Kansas City Chiefs on the AFC side of the NFL’s Super Bowl tournament. Houston is the No. 4 seed as the AFC South champion and hosted Saturday’s game even though No. 5 seed Los Angeles’ 11-6 regular-season record was one game better than the Texans’. The Chargers were favored by oddsmakers to win the game.
“If God be for you, who can be against you?” Anderson told reporters in the Houston locker room. “My mom told me that one, and that’s just how I felt. It doesn’t matter what everybody says, like the outside noise. We know what type of team we got. And, man, it’s really a blessing. I’ve never been a part of a team with this much camaraderie and how special these guys are. The challenge was to embrace this moment. This is a special group of guys here that God has put us together for a season, and we got to embrace it and really step into it.”
The Texans’ right defensive end, Anderson recorded 1.5 of Houston’s four sacks and registered three of the Texans’ nine hits on quarterback Justin Herbert.
Herbert had three of his 504 passes picked off during the regular season. But Houston intercepted Herbert four times on Saturday, with one returned for a touchdown.
Anderson described the Texans’ defensive performance as “we being tight with our rush, they being sticky in coverage.”
After its Wild-Card Weekend win at home, Houston will be on the road in the Divisional Round, with its opponent depending on the outcome of Sunday’s remaining AFC first-round game. If the Buffalo Bills beat the Denver Broncos, the Texans will play at Kansas City in their next game. If the Broncos upend the Bills, Houston will visit the Baltimore Ravens next weekend.
Baltimore beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 28-14 on Saturday night.
“One game at a time,” Anderson said. “We got to keep stacking. Keep coming in getting better. We can’t relax now. We can’t hone in on this win. We can enjoy it, but we got to move on and get ready for our next opponent.”
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.
