It’s just two weeks into the regular season, and Houston Texans coach DeMeco Ryans is already defending a decision he and offensive coordinator Nick Caley made in the team’s 20-6 loss to the Bengals on Sunday.
The Texans were facing fourth-and-inches from the Bengals’ 18-yard line with a chance to score the game’s first points.
Ryans opted to go for it, and Caley called a run up the middle for running back David Montgomery.
But the play was doomed from the start.
The Texans knew the Bengals’ strength was the interior of their defensive line. Yet Bengals defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence was still able to split rookie guard Keylan Rutledge and center Evan Brown almost immediately and wrapped up Montgomery for a 1-yard loss.
In answering a question about what happened, Ryans said Rutledge and Brown was supposed to double-team Lawrence.
But it appeared that Brown disengaged too early and didn’t do enough to slow Lawrence.
“Our center has to stay on Dexter Lawrence,” Ryans said. “That block is not just on Rutledge himself. That is not a single block. We know we’re playing one of the best defensive tackles in the league.
“We have to stay on him, four hands on him, like I mentioned earlier in the week. That didn’t change. We have to double team that guy if you expect to get a yard. We did not do that, therefore we did not convert the fourth-and-1.”
Lawrence was dominant. With him on the field, the Texans averaged 1 yard per carry. With him off it, the Texans averaged 8 yards per carry, according to NFL’s Next Gen stats.
But it was that fourth-and-inches play in the second quarter that set the tone for the rest of the game.
One quarter later, Ryans was faced with a decision again to go for it again on fourth-and-short. But he opted to attempt a 58-yard field goal with kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn.
The normally reliable Fairbairn missed it short, squandering another opportunity to score points.
When asked whether the failed fourth-down attempt in the second quarter affected his decision to kick it in the third quarter, Ryans declined to answer directly but defended the decision.
“I made a decision on both of those,” he said. “I make the decision to go for it or to not go for it. I decided to kick the field goal, 58-yarder. I have all the confidence in the world in Ka’imi, he made it last week from the same spot.
“Everybody gave him praise. It’s a tough kick. He didn’t make it, we move on. We live with the decisions we make.”
Ryans has been more apt to go for it on fourth downs in recent years. He converted on 57.1% of his fourth-down attempts in 2025.
They went 2-for-2 on fourth down attempts in the season-opener against the Bills but went 0-for-4 against the Bengals. That’s good enough for a 33.3% conversion rate through two games.
So the decision to kick the field goal on the fourth-and-short situation in the third quarter when they needed a touchdown came as a bit of a surprise.
But Ryans was adamant it was less about the play calls or the decisions and more about the execution of those plays, and others.
“We can pinpoint the one fourth-down play, but to me it’s many more plays in the game where we could coach it better and we can play it better,” Ryans said.
The Texans are 0-2 to start the season for the third time in four seasons under Ryans. In 2025, the Texans were able to turn things around after their 0-3 start and finish with 12 wins.
But that felt different. The Texans’ offense hadn’t found its identity, and they were losing each of those games by one possession.
The chances of teams making the playoffs after an 0-3 start drop dramatically.
That’s why fixing those issues this week, before the Texans face the Indianapolis Colts (0-2) will be paramount. There’s a chance the Texans could be without wide receiver Nico Collins for a second consecutive week, turning the attention back to a running game that has struggled to open holes consistently.
“It wasn’t our brand of ball, and it showed what we need to improve,” running back David Montgomery said.
The Texans’ offense is often predicated off the success of the running game and the ability to disguise what it wants to do. The Texans didn’t have a ton of yards in their first game, but they had several explosive runs and three rushing touchdowns. It led to 31 points in their season-opener.
If the run game isn’t working and the Texans go exclusively to the pass, as they did Sunday, then that gives opposing defenses more opportunities to get to the quarterback.
The Texans were sacked four times in the fourth quarter against the Bengals.
After that failed fourth-down attempt in the second quarter, the Texans ran just five designed runs for the rest of the game, including only one in the fourth quarter.
Quarterback C.J. Stroud finished with 55 pass attempts. And the Texans became just the ninth team since the NFL-AFL merger to throw 55 or more passes and score six or fewer points, per Pro Football Reference.
“We’re putting the (onus) on (Nick) Caley on abandoning the run game, but if you’re an offensive coordinator, would you keep running the ball if you’re not having success on runs?” Montgomery said. “No you probably wouldn’t. We were playing from behind, and in the moment the pass game was working.
“But we weren’t able to run the ball.”
Ryans, for his part, said everyone needs to be better, from players to coaches. And he preached a similar message to the one he delivered last year when he said everyone needs to stay connected.
“We just have to make sure we buckle down, make sure we coach it better,” he said. “First and foremost, I have to coach it better. If I coach it better, we play a little bit better, train a little bit longer, and find a way to finish a football game.”
Subscribe
There’s more to Houston with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.
This article originally published at DeMeco Ryans defends Houston Texans’ fourth-down calls vs. the Bengals. He explains what went wrong.
About the Author
