JACKSONVILLE, FL – Welcome to the Film Room, where we’ll break down important parts of the last Texas team football game. Please take a seat. Put the phone aside. Let’s dive in.
Smith stabilizes 12-year drought: “Of course they brought it up,” Tremon Smith said. Of course CBS anchors Andrew Catalon and James Lofton brought on 2018. The kick-back from Texas was a rookie playing for the then-President, on October 14, 2018, when the Patriots chased him unscathed by Devin McCurty. National Television, three yards from the landing.
“Everyone’s still talking about it,” Smith said. “I think it’s done for now, though. I think they can leave it in the past.”
Smith looked back a few times on his 98-yard rear landing against a Jaguar. Once after the breakout through the interventions at 30. Again near the midline. Three more times before crossing the line.
“When I hack them in the last few interventions, I’m like, ‘I can’t catch me,'” Smith said. ‘So I keep looking back, and I keep looking back. And I should stop doing that, too. I should start looking at the Jumbotron. If I stop looking back, I will stop slowing down and I won’t have to worry about anyone holding me.”
Texas first-year general manager Nick Caserio grabbed Smith for another season, signing the 25-year-old’s defense in early December for a one-year, $1.6 million extension. Smith has already returned on the investment.
His average return of 29 yards ranks him third in the NFL among players who have returned 10 or more kicks. It gave a boost to Houston special teams that longtime comeback specialist Andre Roberts failed to deliver in six games before the Texans cut him off in mid-October. It was Smith who interrupted the franchise’s 12-year wait — a 4,459-day drought since Jacoby Jones’s 95-yard touchdown against the Raiders Raiders on October 4, 2009, the longest active drought in the NFL.
“He’s pretty explosive out there,” coach David Cooley said of Smith, who has now returned 12 kicks for 354 yards in eight games.
Of course, Smith’s landing was more than speed. In the age of illegal wedge blocks and set-up zones, NFL special teams coordinators must design more literal scoring schemes for kickoff in a game that gives receiving teams increasingly more incentive to catch and accept touches.
Frank Ross, who took over management of the Houston units in 2021 after three years as an assistant at Indianapolis, first built a breakthrough around former Texas return specialist Andre Roberts. But the two-time All-Pro’s 21.4 yards were below the NFL average (22.2) and the Texans cut Roberts in mid-October.
Enter Smith. The four-year veteran signed a one-year, $1.1 million contract in March. He led the Texans into the pre-season kick-back yards before entering the season as a reserve cornerback who played various special teams roles. Then, when Roberts was cut, Smith returned his first kick 27 yards in Houston’s seventh-week loss in Arizona.
Smith was part of the productivity increase. Part of that, Ross said, is the increased cohesion of units made up mostly of players spread across the various NFL teams a year ago.
“It’s an 11-man show,” Ross said in early December. “One collapse might stop you in your tracks. Two crashes, you might not have any shot at all. When you get that curl, when you get that one shot, you (Smith) get speed and a little wobble towards it. We want to attack slopes aggressively.”
Then came what would be Smith’s longest comeback until a Jaguar game, a 44-yard return before the break in Houston’s eighth-week loss to the Rams. The comeback was enough to give the Texans a chance on a field try even though the attack started from their 38 with only 23 seconds left in the second quarter.
Kick-off designs for upcoming matches are important, so here’s some base clarity necessary before we proceed:
• The kick-off team must have at least five players on each side of the ball
Two of these five (on each side) must line up between the side line and the numbers
Two of these five (on each side) must line up between the numbers and hash marks
These requirements prevent starting teams from overburdening any part of the court, and since players also cannot have more than one yard, the rules forbid crowded collisions and a full tilt on kicks to the side.
There are noticeable limitations to receiving teams as well:
• At least eight players must line up within 15 yards of the ball before it is kicked (called the “setup area”)
• A player cannot block inside the setting area until the ball has been touched or hit the ground
• Only players who start in the setup area can perform two-team blocks
Setup area rules, particularly dual team restrictions, lead to scenarios where different pairs of setup area blockers bounce back, connect, and then attempt to close a path to enter the return.
On Smith’s 44-yard return for the Rams (the sequence pictured below), which was kicked toward the right-hand portion of the end zone, linebackers Garrett Wallow (white arrow) and Neville Hewitt (orange arrow) tied in the Houston 35 to provide the initial wall to return toward Right side line.
The Rams have a balanced starting alignment (two outside the numbers, three inside the numbers), but they are unable to break through the double Wallow-Hewitt team (circled in white) or the extra Houston blocks (circled in green). Running back Scotty Phillips (circled in purple) and tight end Anthony Auclair (circled chestnut) secure the lead blocks freeing Smith to the sideline. If it weren’t for Rams’ Matt Gay sprinting on Smith Road near the midfield, Smith’s touchdown might have come that afternoon.
“We were a man or two away from breaking it earlier,” Cooley said, “that no one put it in the peg where we needed to get it. One guy here and another guy there.”
Perhaps the Texans were one player away again in the final minutes of their Week 12 home game against the Jets (the sequence shown below), a result that would have tied the game to a 21-14 loss.
The aircraft used the same balanced starting alignment as the rams. But this time around, Jets Kicker footballer Matt Amendola – who (note the extra letter “m”) has nothing to do with Texas slot future Danny Amendola, even though Danny has an older brother named Matt – kicked the ball in the middle.
Texas responded with a more balanced ban design. There was no double difference. But they directed the planes inward to eventually create a hole on the left.
Wide receiver Chris Moore (white arrow) and safety Eric Murray (black arrow) both pushed defenders toward midfield. The right side was closed by additional barriers (circled in yellow), Wallow (yellow arrow) and safety AJ Moore (blue arrow) pushed defenders with exceptional blocks to the right, opening a lane on the left.
Had Auclair (circled in green) closed his cannon, Smith might have caught him. But Jets Javelin Guidry’s corner kick faltered enough at 20 for Del’Shawn Phillips back to finish the job at Houston 31.
The Texas attack went three times over twice before the game ended.
Then Smith’s landing arrived.
The Jaguars entered Sunday’s game with a wrinkle in the kick-off alignment they hadn’t used before when they played the Texans again in Week 1 (sequence shown below). Note that the left side has the usual equilibrium, while the right side fulfilled its requirement of having two players outside the numbers and two players inside the hashes, But They placed their third defender legally in the middle of the field, near the ball (yellow number).
That was the safety of rookie Andre Sisko, a third-round pick from Syracuse who has become somewhat of a gunner in the Jaguar starting team. Jacksonville debuted in this alignment during week five, pocketed it in weeks 8 and 9, and then put it back for the five games leading up to the rematch with the Texans, including the previous week against the Titans, when Cisco forced an initial flop.
Ross had a plan ready.
In fact, Smith was so satisfied with it, he couldn’t wait.
“I knew it was a sure comeback and if we got the kick right and made some guys miss it could go the distance,” Smith said. “So, of course, I asked him to start the game with it. And the first kick we got, they tried to kick it away, and they went away to the right. .and then the second, it was just… It was perfect, just like practice.”
Texas made Cisco free to roam against Jaguar cars.
Kick-off went left. So did Cisco in its pursuit of the ball.
But the Texans balanced their barricades to the left, creating a handy lane in greater numbers as Smith had three blockers (numbered in yellow) in front of him.
Moore (1) was cunning. He started inside the setup and lapped around the 20-yard line numbers behind linebackers Eric Wilson (green arrow) and Kevin Pierre-Louis (blue arrow). The rest of the Texas bulkheads surrounded the left sidewall (circled in green) by the time Moore veered vertically, and Smith (circled in red) had the numbers advantage behind Moore, Oakler (2) and Royce Freeman back (3).
When Cisco plowed Wallow’s Way on the sidelines (yellow arrow), it was too late for him to recover.
A path appeared (the sequence shown below).
Auclair Wilson assisted in a block that opened mid-field (blue arrow). The wide receiver closed another Jordan Fizzy shut the other side of the hatch (green arrow). Safety doubled Jonathan Owens and Pierre-Louis defender with a block that smashed Smith with Freeman leading the way (purple arrow).
Smith is still going through four players in the latest effort increase at 30.
Then he went.
“He was coming in there very quickly and with great difficulty,” Cooley said. And he wanted it so badly. And he’d been so close a few times before. And as soon as he got up in that wedge, and there were three or four men there willing to deal with him, man, he ran through those guys. He could see. He felt with it “.
Smith got the first touchdown of his career. Ross got his first position as a special teams coordinator. The Texans got their first appearance twelve years ago. They will hope they never have to wait so long again.
Currently, Smith is enjoying chasing his ghost from Kansas City. He made plans to give every Texas Returning Man a gift.
“It would be a really nice thing,” Smith said. “You know, the holidays are coming too. It’ll be a surprise. They won’t know when they’re going to have it or anything. They’ll be in their locker one day.”
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