The Texans' 2012 season ended in disappointing fashion, with an 11-1 record turning into a 12-4 finish and a lopsided loss at New England in the Divisional Round of the playoffs.
Quarterback Matt Schaub spoke Tuesday about the bitter disappointment that ensued in Houston over a potential Super Bowl season gone by.
"No one had higher expectations or knew what we could do as a team more than us as players," Schaub said on Texans Radio on SportsRadio 610. "(Fan) expectations were high, but ours were higher. We demand so much out of ourselves. We put so much into it. We work so hard to achieve a certain level of success. And we fell short of our goal, inside the locker room and out, but we're going to get right back to the grindstone and get right back to work and get ourselves right back there next year."
The Texans' offense had a sharp drop-off in the final month of the season. They averaged 13.3 points per game during the Texans' 1-3 skid after averaging 29.7 points through 12 games. The only time they topped 20 points after Week 13 was in their 42-28 loss to the Patriots in the playoffs.
Now that Schaub has had a few months to reflect on the end of the season, he offered his thoughts on what went wrong offensively down the stretch.
"I think as a whole group, we need to just be more consistent," he said. "We lost our consistency level that we had maintained for the better part of the season, just our ability on first down to be successful and put ourselves in manageable situations, make our third downs manageable. We had some penalties; we had some turnovers that hurt us. When you have those things and you're in a lot of long-yardage third-down situations, that's hard to convert.
"When you're playing good teams, especially late in the season and the playoffs, those things can hurt you. When you're not staying on the field offensively and scoring sevens, teams like New England, teams like Indianapolis the way they were playing at the end of the season, they're tough teams to beat, especially on the road. So we've got to figure out that level of consistency and maintain that."
Twitter.com/NickScurfield
