Houston - 20, New Orleans - 13
DENNIS ALLEN: Way too many missed opportunities in this game. We had plenty of chances. Red zone continues to jump up and bite us. Missed a couple field goals today, which is uncharacteristic.
Defensively I thought we played poorly in the first half. They were better than we were in the first half of the game, that's for certain. Gave up too many explosive plays. We intercepted the ball and turned it right back over to them. We had the ball on the 41 yard line.
So just way too many mistakes and way too many missed opportunities. And we have to -- I told the team in there we've got to do a better job of executing our jobs. If we're not executing our jobs, then we need to find somebody else that can execute those jobs. Doesn't matter who you are.
Q. Dennis, was there miscommunication on the offense today?
DENNIS ALLEN: There were some things at the line of scrimmage that we missed, more from a route concept than from a protection standpoint.
Q. Andrus was active today, but was he obviously --
DENNIS ALLEN: Look, he was dealing with a groin, so he was going to be the emergency eighth offensive linemen in the game.
Q. So like the last one?
DENNIS ALLEN: Correct.
Q. Why do you think the offense still at this stage is having things like this happen?
DENNIS ALLEN: I wish I had the answer to that because, if I had the answer, we'd have it fixed. We've just got to continue to keep looking at it, continue to keep working at it. It's an area that has to get better.
It was good last week. It wasn't good this week. At the end of the day, that ends up costing you games.
I felt like we were able to move the ball. I thought we moved the ball efficiently. I still feel like, in that we're moving the ball, and then all of a sudden we'll have some negative plays. I think we had a couple of holding calls down in the red area, which got us into first and long or second and long situations, and it's hard to overcome that.
I think penalties down there were a big deal. The first drive we end up getting a negative play. As we get into kind of scoring position, or at least close to scoring position, we get a negative play which puts us at second and 14. We end up trying a long field goal there.
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of things we have to clean up.
Q. How big of a swing was the interception and the fumble?
DENNIS ALLEN: That's a big momentum change in the game. Again, we're going to take over possession around the 41 yard line, something like that, in their territory. Instead we give them the ball right back, and they're able to kind of go down and capitalize on it.
So, yeah, I thought that was a big play in the game.
Q. What did you see on the missed Grupe field goal?
DENNIS ALLEN: I'm not sure exactly what happened. Obviously he pulled it left. I think he just missed the kick.
Q. In the second half (indiscernible), butwhat were the Texans able to do in the first half to establish running the ball?
DENNIS ALLEN: I don't think we did a good enough job getting off blocks. I think they ran extremely hard. I think their backs ran extremely hard. I think they did a good job of blocking. I don't think we executed like we're capable of executing.
They were better than us in the first half from an offensive standpoint against our defense. We had to get in at halftime and talk about a couple of things. I thought our guys played better in the second half.
Q. Obviously I don't know how many were called and how many were choices by the quarterback, but that final drive stalled with a lot of deep shots at the end zone. Was that an approach, or was that what they were offering you?
DENNIS ALLEN: It's kind of a little bit of both. I think there were some opportunities there. We got a lot of pressure there at the end of the game. So I thought we had some chances, particularly the ball over to our right in the back of the end zone over there to Shaheed. I thought we had a chance there.
Again, we weren't on the same page in terms of what we were doing there. Yeah, that part of the passing game has to be better in terms of -- look, every team in the league goes in, and they have certain things that, okay, hey, look, if we're getting this, we want to get to this. We're not unique in that way.
So we have to be able to kind of change a play based on what we're seeing, and everybody has to be on point with that.
Q. (No microphone). What went into that decision to take him out?
DENNIS ALLEN: I think five games in, and I saw some improvements from the player. Yet I've wanted him to kind of be able to sit back and see the game from a different perspective and kind of grow that way.
Then obviously with James going down, he had to go in there and play. I thought he got off to a little bit of a rough start, but then I thought he settled in a little bit more. Again, we'll evaluate the tape and see how that ended up playing out.
Yeah, I think we just wanted to give him a chance to kind of step back a little bit and kind of see the game from a different perspective.
Q. How did he handle it?
DENNIS ALLEN: Look, I thought he handled it well. I thought he had a good week of practice, and he knows that he's got to continue to work to get better, which he's going to do. So I thought he handled it well. We'll see where we're at next week.
Q. Did you say a couple of times you wanted him to take the snaps? That was important for him?
DENNIS ALLEN: Yeah, and look, there's still part of that to it. I look at him as still a rookie player, and there's some ups and downs that go along with that. There's different ways to learn. There's trial by fire, and then there's giving a guy an opportunity to step back and take a breath.
Again, like I said, evaluate and see the game from a different perspective. So that's what went into the decision.
Q. You were talking about Derek kind of getting to the right play based on what he's seeing from the defense. I know you haven't had a chance to review this game yet, but in general, what are your thoughts on the decision-making and kind of overall?
DENNIS ALLEN: Overall I think the decision-making's been fairly good. I think in every game you look at and say there's probably a few plays you'd kind of like to have back. So without really having seen the tape, I don't want to go get too in depth with that.
Look, I thought overall, I thought his decision-making has been pretty good.
Q. Short week ahead, so the message to the team?
DENNIS ALLEN: Look, swallow it and let's go. We don't have a lot of time to sit around and feel sorry for ourselves. This is a big man's league that we're in, so we've got to pick ourselves up off the mat and regroup, get ready for a good Jacksonville team.
Q. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but at the end of your statement, you talked about evaluating goals. Are you talking about personnel?
DENNIS ALLEN: Look, we all have jobs to do -- players, coaches, personnel, everybody has jobs to do, and we have to do a better job collectively as a group, all of us.
Q. You had mentioned the Texans running backs doing really well today. What were some of the issues you saw that made them hard to tackle?
DENNIS ALLEN: I thought they ran hard. I don't think we got off blocks nearly as good as we needed to. I don't think we had enough violence at the point of attack. A lot of things we had to address and get better at the second half, and I thought we got better in the second half.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports