Quarterbacks are football’s main character; other players don’t have their faces spliced together in increasingly gruesome playoff preview graphics. But in the Chargers–Texans AFC Wild Card game, a fever dream befitting the Saturday afternoon TV window, both teams seemed determined to show the quarterbacks just how little they mattered.
By the start of the fourth quarter, things were getting downright goofy. Down 23-6 to the Texans and fresh off back-to-back interceptions, Justin Herbert took two quick sacks to set up third-and-forget-about-it inside his own 15. On the next play, rookie receiver Ladd McConkey made a grab in traffic and shook a sticky defensive back loose for an 86-yard house call. Leave it to the Chargers to score a four-point touchdown. Texans special teams blocked the extra point, evidently spooked kicker Cameron Dicker into forgetting the rules of football (he tried batting the ball down as if that might get the play whistled dead), and returned the blocked kick for the first defensive two-point conversion in playoff history. Even when the Chargers offense found the end zone, the Texans defense said it would have to be on their terms.
A great pass rush can keep even the most busted offense in any game, and the Texans offense certainly searched for the limits of the Texans defense early in this one. Though an encouraging playoff run made them the darlings of the NFL last season, both quarterback C.J. Stroud and offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik have had a rougher go of things this year. The Texans paper over their flaws on offense with a breathtaking pass rush and a secondary full of playmakers. But their offensive line has an unfortunate way of making every other defense look just as breathtaking and dominant. When Stroud and the offense had only three punts, a pick, and a fumble to show for themselves near the end of the first half, it looked like the Chargers' 6-0 lead might be enough to win.
The Texans offense would need to stoop even lower to find a way out: Stroud's first big play of the game was, appropriately, a broken one with two minutes left in the half. On third-and-16, he fumbled a high snap, recovered it inside his own five-yard line, scrambled to his right, and found a wide-open Xavier Hutchinson at midfield. Stroud looked more at ease afterward, and he seemed to have unlocked something with Nico Collins, who finished off that drive with a 13-yard receiving touchdown to give Houston the lead.
UNREALLLL THROW FROM CJ7 🤯
— Houston Texans (@houstontexans.bsky.social) 2025-01-11T22:54:18.920Z
The defense could finish the job in the second half. Entering this game, they were expected to be the best unit on the field and they delivered. Up front, 2023 first-rounder Will Anderson and free agent signing Danielle Hunter won their matchups against two top tackles in Joe Alt and Rashawn Slater. They had even more fun inside, against a line that really struggled to block stunts. For all the game's jankiness, there was some lovely, complementary football happening on this side of the ball. Sometimes Derek Stingley and the Texans defensive backfield outmatched the Chargers' league-worst group of weapons and forced Herbert to hold onto the ball long enough for the pass rush to deliver a blow. Other times, quick pressures from the pass rush forced Herbert into terrible throws. McConkey’s 197 receiving yards accounted for nearly the entire Chargers offense, but even he could not save Herbert from an overthrow that sailed through his hands and became a pick-six.
Good quarterbacks behind better interior offensive lines than Herbert’s have looked just as pedestrian against the Texans defense: Jared Goff threw five interceptions in Houston on Sunday Night Football in Week 10 and Josh Allen’s final line against them in Week 5 was 9-of-30. Even on a worse day against Lamar Jackson, they were the only Texans unit putting up points. Final score: 31-2.
Herbert threw more interceptions in this one game (four) than he had all season (three). It is the nature of quarterback discourse that your own blame allocation will depend on how you felt about him before the game. His career prospects are still spoken of with disconcerting rosiness five seasons into his career; to declare from a sample size of two that he “can’t get it done in the playoffs” also feels like weird and unspecific analysis, the kind that tends to look silly in retrospect. Admittedly, this brand of analysis is fun, and that is what this game was all about: wrecking shit and having fun, quarterbacks be damned.
