Houston Texans Media Conference

Sunday, October 18, 2020

Houston, Texas, USA

Romeo Crennel

Press Conference


Texans - 36, Titans - 42

Q. Romeo, when you scored that last touchdown, did you give any thought taking an extra point to have them have a touchdown to have a two point conversion to tie?

ROMEO CRENNEL: No. I wanted to go ahead and get the two points. I felt like that would kind of put if out of reach for them. And if we had gotten it, we would have been in which better shape. As it turned out, we didn't get it, and then with the touchdown and the extra point they tied it up and then we're in over time. And then we didn't perform in overtime, and they win the game.

Q. Romeo, Derek obviously is an excellent back. What makes him so tough to stop, and what was the strategy which you guys attempted to try against him today?

ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, as I said during the week, the thing that you have to do with him, if he gets to the second level, then he becomes a much better back because he can gain yards, defensive backs trying to tackle him have a hard time. And so keep him from getting to the second level. And when we did that, it was two yards, three yards and not 94 yards. You know. And so everybody has to do their job, everybody has to fit in place and everybody has to be disciplined enough to understand that their teammate has a responsibility also, and when he starts into your teammates' gap, let your teammate take care of that gap and you make sure you're taking care of your gap.

Q. Aside from the two point conversion you were also aggressive today on fourth down, three for three on fourth down and last week you went for it on fourth down, that touchdown that put the game away. What sort of message do you think you're sending this team as the interim coach when you are aggressive like that?

ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, I think offensively, they feel pretty good about where they were at that point and what they'd been able to do to get it to fourth and short, you know, three whatever it was. And then when you go for it and you make it, that just gives them more confidence, you know. The thing is that sometimes if you go for it and you don't make it, then they begin to wonder why you went for it in the first place. That's the nature of this game that we're in. When you win, when you're successful, everybody feels good about it. When you lose and you're not successful on a play, then everybody feels usually bad about it.

Q. On that last drive in regulation, were you disappointed that your defense wasn't able to get a stop there after the offense had such a good performance to put your team pretty far ahead?

ROMEO CRENNEL: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, they got 94 yards to go or 96 yards to go, which is basically almost the length of the field. And so you figure that if they have to matriculate the ball down the field that's going to use time on the clock and it's going to be tough for them to get a touchdown and all that. But when they can hit 94 yards on one play, they don't use any time off the clock, and it's just -- it's a little demoralizing.

Q. Could you please talk about Watson's performance and how hard it is to waste a performance like he had today?

ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, he had a great performance, and he does unbelievable things on the field. He can get out of trouble, and, you know, it is tough when you are not able to take advantage of a performance like that. And that's the thing that we wanted to do. We thought we had a chance to do, but we didn't do. So we gotta go back and hopefully he can have more performances like that and then defensively we can do a better job to help him out.

Q. You gave up a lot of yards. You also did create some turnovers. What's your overall take on the defense? Obviously not the result or the yardages, but what did you think overall the defense was?

ROMEO CRENNEL: It wasn't good enough. There were some good plays, but overall it wasn't good enough.

Q. On that last play, why not call timeout there? It looked like the defense wasn't prepared for the Wildcat with Derrick Henry running that play and Tannehill split out wide.

ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, see, if we hadn't practiced that play, I would say maybe they weren't prepared. But that play was run in practice. And they should have been prepared. They knew it was the Wildcat. They knew it was the Wildcat. And they thought that they knew where the ball was going to go. And the ball started where they thought it was going to go, but then when the ball came back, the responsibility had been vacated, and so there's a lot of space for the runner.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
102653-1-1234 2020-10-18 21:12:00 GMT

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