There were Texans defenders who had worse days — namely rookie cornerback Kevin Johnson who kept getting torched for touchdown passes.
But celebrated defensive end J.J. Watt failed to have his usual impact on the stat sheet, or the Bills, in a 30-21 loss.
Watt had one sack negated by a penalty, leaving him with no sacks and no quarterback hits in yesterday’s loss, in which they were picked apart by Tyrod Taylor and the Bills.
That’s a far cry from what we’re used to seeing from Watt, who led the league with 13.5 sacks. He managed just four tackles, as the Bills had a plan for him all day.
“We didn’t play well,” Watt said, via Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle. “We didn’t execute well enough on defense. The offense played well.
“We didn’t do enough on defense. We just need to play better. We need to execute better. We need to do our jobs better.”
Watt missed two practices last week with a groin injury, making it easy to wonder if he was well enough to contribute as he normally does. But the Bills also paid plenty of extra attention, including sending left guard Richie Incognito his way often, to keep him from taking over a game.
“We’re putting two, three guys on him every snap,” Bills coach Rex Ryan said. “We’re doing everything we possibly can against him, but he’s just a great player. Man, oh man, you know where he’s at certainly, and we did. We had a great plan, I thought.”
It worked, as Watt was barely heard from, which is a big part of the reason the Bills had so much success moving the ball.