Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans met with the media on Monday morning following the Texans 26-15 victory over the San Francisco 49ers. Ryans was met with a question about how his team handles outside noise and delivered a pretty standard response to that type of question, but two follow up questions about the same topic led to a tense standoff between the third-year head coach and a couple of media members.
This was Ryans initial response to how he and his team handle outside noise:
“It really doesn’t matter,” Ryans said. “There’s a lot of negative talk about us, we get it. I hear people trying to give it to me all the time, I get it, but it really doesn’t matter. Everybody wants to write the hot story and most of the time it’s negative stuff that people want to talk about, nobody wants to talk about the positive stuff that happens.”
If you feed off of that and you’re riding the pendulum… that’s our business, I get it but that’s the nature of it,” Ryans continued. “We keep moving forward, it doesn’t drive anything, it means nothing, literally nothing. We’ve just got to go out and play good football.”
Two reporters followed up with questions, asking “You don’t think you’ve gotten any positive stuff at all?”
Ryans was taken aback by the push back from the reporters.
“I said people thrive on the negative,” Ryans said. “You guys are good? You guys must be the ones with the negative stuff. We’re playing football, you talk about outside noise, I’ll say it again, it doesn’t matter. Good, bad, it doesn’t change how we prepare.”
Ryans Keeps Cool Head At Podium
As one of the younger coaches in the NFL, Ryans handled the tense moment with the poise of a much more experienced head coach. The push back from reporters was largely unprofessional, especially after Ryans deflected the question the second time.
Ryans and the Texans got plenty of positive media coverage both locally and nationally during the 2023 season, when C.J. Stroud had a phenomenal rookie season and Houston charged into the playoffs. Since then, the Texans have been up-and-down, leading to some of the “negative” reporting regarding Ryans’ ability to coach in the NFL and Stroud potentially being a one-hit wonder.
Texans Back To 3-4 After 0-3 Start To Season
Since starting 0-3 with flat offensive production, Houston has gone 3-1 in it’s last four games, including two blowouts over Baltimore and Tennessee. There was plenty of negative outside noise following the Texans 0-3 start, but Ryans must be right about avoiding the negativity from outside the room because Houston has not rolled over after a poor start.
Stroud, missing his star receiver in Nico Collins, put up his best game of the season against a strong San Francisco defense. He threw for 318 yards and two touchdowns while finding five different receivers at least four times.
If Stroud has truly rounded a corner and emerged from his sophomore slump from the 2024 season, Houston could be a team to watch out for in the second half of the season, especially with how good the defense has been even through their 0-3 start.
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