Houston Texans Media Conference

Monday, August 23, 2021

Houston, Texas, USA

David Culley

Press Conference


DAVID CULLEY: -- to go into the second half of a ballgame, we haven't had that yet and so the plan is, is to try to take them into the third quarter to kind of see how handle the just from the first half to the second half.

Q. Are you glad you're going up against defending Super Bowl Champion, give you a good challenge?

DAVID CULLEY: Well, you know what, those last two has been a good challenge for us, too. It's the third preseason game and obviously they are who they are and you know, we are looking forward to it.

Q. Is Laremy back today?

DAVID CULLEY: He is not back. He's here but he is not back and he's not ready to practice yet.

Q. Is he going to meetings?

DAVID CULLEY: Yes.

Q. Shaq Lawson was playing well until the fourth quarter. What have you seen from him? Is there more you need to see out of him?

DAVID CULLEY: Not just him but all those guys. Again I'm going to go back to that competition those guys are having. Sometimes those guys are in there and then they are taken out because Bobby is going in and out with those guys. They are trying to get a really good evaluation of them.

Sometimes they get into the game and they get into a little flow and all of a sudden you're out of the game and then you're back in the game, and sometimes that gets frustrating for those guys.

But for the most part he's been doing great just like those other two guys have been doing.

Q. You said COVID vaccination was a personal choice but do you comfortable in general do you feel with the team's vaccinations?

DAVID CULLEY: I feel very comfortable with it. It's very high. I believe we have maybe only four or five guys that have not done it yet, and between now and whenever, they could do it. Obviously there's a waiting period to do that. But we feel good about it.

Q. Having had a chance to see the tape, is there anything that stood out to you positively about the offense on Saturday?

DAVID CULLEY: Well, let me go to the negative. I know you said positive but there was a negative -- we were 0 for 10 on third down, which was, you know, not acceptable. And then a couple of those were third and shorts. The positive thing, the most positive thing which has something to do with us still having a chance to win the ballgame with four turnovers, we did not turn the ball over and that was the most positive thing about coming out of the game offensively.

Q. The defense gave up a 50 percent allowed on third down including 50 percent when the starters were in. Were you worried about that?

DAVID CULLEY: I'm not worried about it but that's not good. The other thing, too, is they were two or two in the red zone when they got down there. Basically we've had some issues in the first two of in the red zone and not getting touchdowns and obviously the opponent we just played were two-for-two getting down there. It's not a concern because basically what happens when you play these present games, we're not game planning them so to speak, so we're just going out there and we're planning and we've practiced against each other and we practiced against what we do offensively and defensively.

And then you go out there and you see some things that you had not seen before that you normally would see during the regular season and that has a lot to do with that also.

Q. The blitzes they were throwing at you on third down -- is that what the tape showed?

DAVID CULLEY: It wasn't just the blitzes. It was the fact that we had some mental errors. We had a couple mental errors in there that normally wouldn't happen that would have take care of that and quite frankly what happened is we had not seen as much, and like I said, we didn't practice for them to do that. We practiced against blitzes with our selves and basically it wasn't anything that was unusual. It was just we had a couple mental errors, and they did a good job and we had a couple things called that were tough against what we were doing.

Q. Do you expect Collins to practice today?

DAVID CULLEY: I do.

Q. On Laremy, does he have to be officially activated off the COVID list?

DAVID CULLEY: That hasn't happened yet.

Q. Today after the transactions --

DAVID CULLEY: Not necessarily today.

Q. Is that the first time you got to see the tight end on Saturday, what did you see after looking at the film?

DAVID CULLEY: It's what I thought it would be. Those guys at the point of attack are guys that are going to be a big part of our running game and basically we have had success and been probably as consistent in our run game as we have anything on offense, they are a big part of doing that and I was glad to see that.

Q. With the run game, when you're weighing these decisions, how do you evaluate how many tight ends? How does that influence what you want to do in the running game?

DAVID CULLEY: What influences how many we carry is how guys are playing and basically what we are going to end up doing from the roster standpoint, the best guys that give us the best chance to win, those are the guys we are bog to play with, if that happens to be the tight end position, receiver position, whatever position that is, you make the decision based on that.

Q. Speaking of the running game; there anything different that you saw against the Cowboys that did not have them because you guys had a little bit of a drop off in the run game?

DAVID CULLEY: I think that was more so of just how we went in to approach the game to do some things we do differently on offense that we had not done before. I don't think it had anything to do with the fact that it was who we were playing. It just had something to do with the things that we were calling and what we were trying to see.

We were trying to get the ball in certain people's hands. We wanted to see certain guys in certain situations and so basically Tim called the game basically to kind of evaluate some of our person until.

Q. How much of an asset is Tyrod with his legs, is there an element of the run game that you can start in the preseason --

DAVID CULLEY: Basically that happens -- we are not asking him to run, but we know that when he's back there with the ball in his hands in a passing situation, we know that he's mobile enough to be able to get out of trouble, to keep plays alive. And the one thing the defense -- Lovie talks about this all the time, you the worst thing you want to happen to you when you have everybody covered down the field is a mobile quarterback to be able to get out there have and get a first down for you because you have everybody else covered.

Q. So you really would have wanted to use him in the run game on design --

DAVID CULLEY: We do have plays in our offense that are designed to do that, but not necessarily -- and that's a game plan deal. That's a game plan. Depends on who we're playing.

Q. What do you think about using fullbacks in general and what do you think of the tight ends --

DAVID CULLEY: That's a multi-thing to be able to have tight ends who are basically, when you take them off the line of scrimmage, are like another fullback. And so we are fortunate that we've got a number of guys that are able to do that and you've seen us do that with Pharaoh a few times. You see us do that with Anthony because they are big bodies.

They understand in the run game from a fullback standpoint what we want to do, and it's an advantage to be able to have that in your offense.

Q. What do you want to see this week? You talk about competition, but as you get closer to the season what do you want to see?

DAVID CULLEY: I want to basically see how we can sustain things during basically for the whole half with basically the same guys in there when we are playing. We haven't done that yet. We have basically had kind of a pitch count for certain guys and hopefully in this game right here we can get a little bit more consistency in going into the second half with the same guys and seeing how the consistency develops with those guys.

Q. I wanted to ask you, any update on Anthony Miller?

DAVID CULLEY: No, no update.

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