Ryan Mallett's First Start a Victory for Bill O'Brien

Here we go again, Texans fans. 

A midseason quarterback change sparked a dead offense in Houston's 23-7 win over the Cleveland Browns. The reaction from this game seems to be very similar to what I remember from the Keenuming: Half the fans want to declare quarterback Ryan Mallett the next great NFL quarterback, 40 percent of them are staying measured but have some optimism and I'm sitting out on the smoking patio with three friends, talking about how poorly this is going to end. 

Despite that, I do think there is some warranted optimism in this game—I just think it's optimism I've found in head coach Bill O'Brien rather than in Mallett.

Mallett showed a much better command of this offense than we saw with deposed quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, including but not limited to better pre-snap reads and the ability to run the no-huddle offense effectively. This was different from Case Keenum's big debut to me, because this is the game plan that O'Brien wants to run for the long term, not one Gary Kubiak ran because he had to.

"

Ryan Mallett's average time per pass attempt was 2.06 seconds vs CLE. Off the charts fast, lowest in the league this week.

— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) November 18, 2014"

Perhaps most importantly, the ball was coming out on time when it was easy. For all the media talk we got about Fitzpatrick being smart—he went to Harvard—it was amazing how he could consistently turn an easy play into a mistake. O'Brien's offense looked much smoother with Mallett at the helm, and that's a testament to Mallett's ability to internalize the passing-game concepts that O'Brien had taught him in the past. 

Now, let me put out this Parliament so I can begin to seed your mind for why I didn't think this game necessarily reflected well on Mallett. 

First, this game came against the Cleveland Browns defense. Yeah, Joe Haden seems to be a nice player from afar. (But don't tell Bleacher Report's Cian Fahey that.) But the Browns have been a middling-at-best defense over the past three seasons, even despite bringing in a pair of respected defensive minds like head coach Mike Pettine and former defensive coordinator Ray Horton. There's been some passing-game improvement this year, but a lot of that is weighed down by Andy Dalton's bonkers day.

Year	Defensive DVOA (Rk)	Pass Defense DVOA (Rk)	Run Defense DVOA (Rk)
2014	1.0% (16)	-0.5% (7)	2.6% (29)
2013	8.2% (24)	14.1% (23)	0.7% (23)
2012	4.5% (22)	11.8% (20)	-4.7% (18)

Second, an inordinate amount of Mallett's throws in this game played on the short side of things. As I said, I think this was a smart game plan by O'Brien—it showed that he can hide what I would call an inaccurate passer by mixing in plenty of cupcake short throws against isolated defenders that had to let underneath stuff go.

Football Outsiders typically separates deep from short as the NFL play-by-play does: 15 yards or longer is long, under that is short. Pro Football Focus separates things a little differently, and because they do, you can see just how many of Mallett's passes were quick hitters. 

Source: Pro Football Focus

By the way, that's not to knock Mallett for sticking to the game plan—there's no way the Texans should be forcing deep shots when the game script is on their side—but I think it's a legitimate criticism of using this game as a reason to call him a valuable quarterback. 

When Mallett did go deep, the touch throws weren't really there. 

I think it's a bit of an oversimplification to say that good NFL quarterbacks hit that throw, because there are good quarterbacks who don't have the deep ball completely on their side anymore, but that's the kind of throw that is the difference between an NFL starter and an NFL backup when flaws are evident.

Mallett didn't perform poorly overall on his deeper throws, but I do think his shaky accuracy is a much bigger issue in these spots, and what I saw didn't dissuade me from thinking that. 

Finally, we have to account for the game script. The Texans started the second half with a 72 percent chance of winning, per Advanced Football Analytics. That number never dipped below 69 percent. So, given the game script, there was little reason for the Texans to attempt the sorts of throws that separate good NFL quarterbacks from good backups. Especially since the offensive line and Alfred Blue were churning up huge chunks of yardage on the ground. 

Reflecting on this game, I think Mallett played well, but I also think he was in an ideal situation to play well. There was practically no NFL tape on him prior to the game, the run offense was working, the Cleveland defense is bad, there was practically zero pass pressure and he got to throw to Andre Johnson and DeAndre Hopkins. This offense played out the optimistic version of what the Texans were hoping for this season. 

But as far as what we can take away from it going forward, I don't think I saw enough opportunities of tough situations to say for a fact that Mallett is better than my initial evaluation of him. He's certainly earned the chance to show us more, but I worry that if an enterprising defense man-covers his receivers up and down the board and sends pressure after him, the results won't be pretty. 

What I took away from this game was that O'Brien schematically dominated the Browns defense, to the point where the quarterback almost didn't matter. There were some good Mallett flashes, but I'm going to need to see some tougher throws before I'm prepared to say the Texans have something here.

Rivers McCown is the AFC South lead writer for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Three-Cone Drill podcast. His work has also appeared on Football Outsiders and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter at @riversmccown.