Houston Has 811 Yards and 37 Points, and That Math Is the Texans' Entire Season

Two games into 2026, the Houston Texans have moved the football about as well as almost anyone in the league. They have also scored more points than the New York Giants, who were beaten 28-6 by the Rams on Monday night.

That is not a contradiction anyone at NRG Stadium can wave off. Houston sits at 0-2 after a 20-6 home loss to Cincinnati, having been outscored 56-37 on the season. The Texans are averaging 405.5 yards per game — the kind of number that normally buys you a winning record — while scoring just 18.5 points per game. Add it up and you get roughly 811 yards of offense and 37 points to show for it.

The gap between those two figures is the whole story of Houston's week.

The red zone is where drives go to die

Sunday's loss was the cleanest possible illustration. The Texans were 0-for-4 in the red zone, with their only points coming on two field goals. C.J. Stroud was sacked four times. Cincinnati never had to defend a short field because Houston never made it matter once it got there.

Zoom out and it's the same picture. Houston has converted 12 of 33 third downs (36.4 percent) and has run only three goal-to-go plays all season — a staggering number for a team that has put together as many long drives as this one. The offense is functional between the twenties and invisible inside the twenty.

DeMeco Ryans has seen this movie. "I don't believe in hype, this isn't 2025, we have to earn it," he said after the opener, when Buffalo hung 36 on a defense that spent the offseason being described as the best in football. Week 2 was better on that side — Joe Burrow and the Bengals managed 20 — but a defense that allows 28 points per game isn't going to win shootouts when the offense is settling for field goals.

Stroud isn't the problem

The easy target is the quarterback. The numbers say otherwise. Stroud has thrown for 627 yards with two touchdowns and zero interceptions, a 60.2 percent completion rate and an 87.5 passer rating, and he has been sacked seven times behind a line that keeps changing in front of him.

That last part is the actual issue. Houston entered the season betting big on offensive line help — Braden Smith and three-time Pro Bowler Wyatt Teller, roughly $36 million combined — and both Smith and Sam Hagen landed on injured reserve before the season started. Rookie Keylan Rutledge is still learning on the job. A prominent NFL insider went public with concerns about the group, and the tape has only reinforced them.

The skill positions haven't helped. Nico Collins caught seven passes for 75 yards in Week 1, then injured his hamstring in Wednesday's practice and was ruled out for the Bengals game. Tank Dell, Jayden Higgins and defensive tackle Kayden McDonald are already on IR. Linebacker Henry To'oTo'o, who signed an extension in August, is gone for "some time" with a shoulder injury and has been placed on injured reserve — a real loss for the middle of a defense that was supposed to carry this team.

The path back is narrow but not imaginary

There's a template here, and Houston wrote it last year. The Texans started 0-3 in 2025 and still made the playoffs. Since 1990, roughly 12 percent of teams that opened 0-2 have done the same. That's not a reason for optimism so much as a reminder that the season isn't over in September.

What matters more is that the AFC South is soft. Jacksonville leads the division at 1-1, and Tennessee, Houston and Indianapolis are all 0-2. The Texans travel to face the Colts in a dome next Sunday — a game between two teams that badly need one.

If Houston fixes the red zone, the yardage says this is a playoff team. If it doesn't, the yardage is just a number that makes the losses look more confusing than they are. Right now, the Texans are the rare team that can move the ball on anyone and beat almost no one.