Houston Texans 38 - Indianapolis Colts 30
SHANE STEICHEN: All right. Injury update. Latu had a hip.
Overall, I was pleased with the way the guys battled all day, but at the end of the day, obviously not enough. Turnovers hurt us and penalties hurt us. But I thought Riley did some really good things. He showed up, threw some touchdown passes, moved in the pocket well, made some big-time plays for us.
Q. And what were you most happy with or most impressed with from Riley, watching him from practice and developing --
SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah. I think his preparation was awesome all week, and then the composure throughout the game making plays. Obviously the third play of the game, hitting Alex double move was huge, and hitting Alec again on the corner route, making some plays with his legs. Shoot, I thought he played a tremendous game. Obviously there's a few plays I'm sure he'd want back, just like we all would, but he did some really good things for us.
Q. Not being able to finish there at the end, how indicative?
SHANE STEICHEN: It was frustrating. Yeah, the last half of the season for sure, that's what it's been, not finding ways to finish, and we gotta work tirelessly to get that fixed.
Q. What was the explanation that you or you guys got on the Alec getting disqualified there? From us, it looked like he got walked into it, but I didn't know how you understood that.
SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah. Obviously he was just talking to the official, and they said he bumped into him, and that was a call. And obviously Alec did not mean to do that. Alec's character is top of the line, one of the best dudes on our team. So just an unfortunate situation.
Q. For Alec to finish with over 1,000 yards this season, what does that say about the caliber of player that he is?
SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah. He's made huge strides for us. The way he goes up and makes plays for us week in, week out; the contested catches, the one-on-ones, the double moves, the deep crossing routes, it's been tremendous. Obviously you score points in this league and you get the explosive plays, and he's a huge part of that all year doing that for us.
Q. What did you learn, if anything, specific about Riley from this game today?
SHANE STEICHEN: I learned that he can definitely play in this league for a long time. The way he prepares -- we've seen it all season, but to get out there and do it against a top defense like he did, especially -- I know they took some of their guys out in the second half, but to have 17 points in the first half versus those guys was pretty impressive. Just the way he managed the game. He was calm. He was a competitor, made great plays with his legs when he had to. Just a lot of good things.
Q. Before the season Carlie said that you and Chris had things to fix. Obviously you all think this year wasn't good enough. How would you evaluate everything that happened? You were 8 and 2 and now you're 8 and 9?
SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah, that's a good question. I think I will take some time to think about that for a little bit. Obviously the game just ended, but definitely things we have to get cleaned up for sure. There's no question about it.
Q. Do you worry about your job?
SHANE STEICHEN: You know, for me that's not to decide, but what I will say is I love this team; I love this organization; I love this city; I love the fans.
Q. Do you feel like the arrow is headed in the right direction even though it's very easy to point to the record --
SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah. I do, because I believe that. That's how I feel about it. Obviously we showed signs early in the season that was pretty darn good, and we had some unfortunate circumstances, but that's part of the league. You gotta overcome those circumstances. And that's where you have to learn from and grow from to when you get in those situations. Again, you learn from them and you're like, hey, here's how we have to win now with the circumstances that we have.
Q. Is it just being able to compete in those late-game situations? What do you feel like this team has been missing?
SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah, I think you just gotta dig down deep at the end of the game. When the game is on the line, whether it's a call or a play, you gotta make it to win the game. That's what this league is. It's a lot of one-score games and you gotta find ways to win.
Q. On another note, the double fake punt there in the first half, I imagine you have to go a little deep in the play book to work that through. Kind of talk us through that and where that came from.
SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah, that was pretty cool. We've been working on that all year, Mason, our special teams coordinator. We had the punt up, and it was kind of like, hey, if we get this, let's go back on the ball with the same punt team without substituting and run basically a PP dive there. And you know what it is, when you convert a fake punt, usually it's like, oh, shoot, here comes the offense that guys, here comes the defense. So we kept the guys out there, created chaos, got them with 12 on the field.
Either they're going to call a timeout or something is going to happen. So it was pretty cool to get that done.
Q. Can you like ask for a cut-up of all punt formations on first down?
SHANE STEICHEN: No. Mason and Charlie Gelman are our game management guy. They kind of look through stuff. And I don't know. Who knows. People always say, like, hey, has this been done in the NFL before? I'm like, oh, it's probably never -- it probably has in 1975. Who knows. We don't know, but we're like, I don't know. So it was pretty cool to get that done.
Q. Going back to Alec one second, 47 catches for 1,000 yards. What does that say about how explosive he is as a player and really the other ways he grew, too?
SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah. It says a lot. I think it's his work ethic, first and foremost, the way he goes about his business every day, shows up to work, competes his tail off, and then when the ball is thrown to him, he makes the play.
And when you can create those explosive plays, that's where points come from, and obviously we had that drive to start the third quarter. We threw it. (Indiscernible) went right down there, and then Riley obviously kept it on his own replay. I think that was a four- or five-play drive.
But having that explosive play game in the pass game, having Alec there is huge for our offense.
Q. Just in this last game, what was your message to the guys?
SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah. It was really just about finishing and about learning from this season. And obviously I'll have time to talk to them again tomorrow morning. But I think learning from this season, the good times, obviously, and then obviously how to deal with adversity and doing hard better, because this league is hard and we gotta find a way to do that better and find a way at the end of the games.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports