Snowy Success: Why Green Bay Packers beat Houston Texans
By Kenn Korb
Strong defensive start
During the doldrums of the middle of this season, the area of this team which led to most of their problems usually ended up being their defensive unit.
A key to Green Bay’s 3-1 start to the season was how the defense was able to prevent teams from starting out well, then continuing those efforts as the game progressed to hold off the opposition. In those contests, the Packers allowed 17, 10, 10 and 6 points to Jacksonville, Minnesota, Detroit, and the New York Giants, respectively; three of those starts left them with a lead heading into halftime (all wins).
From that point, things changed for the worst — and their record followed suit. In their following 1-5 skid, the defense gave up 17+ points in the first half of four games (Dallas, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Tennessee); those all became losses, with only one of those instances (Atlanta) seeing Green Bay holding the lead after two quarters.
Things starting to turn for the better in that aspect in both the Washington and Philadelphia games (the Packers held respective 13-10 and 14-10 leads at the half in those games), but the way they came out in this one trumped every other performance by that side of the ball.
Houston had 6 different drives in the first half of this contest. Not a single one put up points. The Texans slogged their way to 3 punts, a lost fumble, a turnover on downs, and running out the clock at the half. This ended up not only being good on its own, but vastly important for Green Bay’s hopes to win, as their own offense struggled with the conditions and were able to put up just a single touchdown themselves.
Of course, the competition matters here (Houston came in with the #31 Offensive DVOA) and they did have some slip-ups in the second half which allowed the Texans to keep this from being a full-game domination. Still, the way the defense began this game set the stage for Green Bay to survive their own offense’s problems and hold control over the scoreboard (Houston never led) long enough to win.
With what we had been accustomed to seeing from them for long stretches of this season, it was heartening to find out they could churn out the sort of positive opening performance necessary to survive their own slow offensive start.