Titans Vs. Texans, Week 4: Tennessee's weaknesses punctuated against Houston

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A rough game for the Titans defense and backup quarterback Matt Hasselbeck spells a blowout loss to the Texans.

Sunday's loss to the Houston Texans — the Tennessee Titans' third in their last five meetings — was the crushing blow to the Titans that proved a look into weaknesses that went beyond missing quarterback Jake Locker, who was removed from the game after a vicious hit on his second drop back.

Over at Music City Miracles, the optimism for the offense under the direction of Matt Hasselbeck wasn't strong, and Sunday's showing didn't do much to improve the stance.

This offense, already down Britt, is dead in the water with Matt Hasselbeck. The only way they can score is to run 30 plays dinking and dunking down the field, but he's too mistake prone for that to be an effective mode of attack.

The optimism on the Titans' defensive effort wasn't much brighter, as Texans quarterback Matt Schuab was able to pick apart Tennessee's secondary and linebackers in pass coverage.

For the 1,000,000^th straight game we got dominated by TEs. Daniels and Casey combined for 11 catches, 108 yards, 2TDs and probably 30 first downs. I can't explain how this issue has been so consistently crippling over the course of two different coordinators and a nearly complete turnover of the LB corps.

Bright spots were to be found, as running back Chris Johnson exploded for more than 140 yards rushing and the defensive front four was strong.

Of course there were some surprises, most notably the surprise appearance of CJ2K and some solid run blocking by the O-line. ...

Sure, they struggled to get pressure against Matt Schaub, but they did an incredible job against the league's best rushing attack. They held the Texans to less than 100 yards, and a paltry 3.1 YPC.