If you didn’t know any better, you would think that the Houston Texans (3-4) lost this past Sunday to the San Francisco 49ers (5-3).

Yet they won 26-15 in dominating fashion, with the offense delivering its best performance of the season, accumulating 475 total yards and controlling the game by holding the ball for over 41 minutes. 

Quarterback C.J. Stroud threw for 318 yards, two touchdowns, and one interception, and used his legs to gain an additional 30 rushing yards, which was five more yards than 49ers star running back Christian McCaffrey.

The defense played lights out during their brief time on the field (18:38), causing chaos for San Francisco backup quarterback Mac Jones throughout the game, never allowing him to build any momentum.

Former Iowa State University wide receivers, Xavier Hutchinson, Jaylin Noel, and Jayden Higgins, all stepped up in the absence of 2024 Pro Bowl wide receiver Nico Collins, who was out with a concussion, and Christian Kirk, who has been dealing with a hamstring injury.

For the first time this season, the offensive line gave Stroud the time he needed to execute first-year offensive coordinator Nick Caley’s system perfectly, keeping him clean all day and preventing a sack.

Overall, the Texans played a great game as they tried to regain their confidence and momentum while climbing back into the AFC playoff race.

Now you might think the article is finished, and you can go on with your day. 

What could be left to say about the game since all the key factors were mentioned?

Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock here in Houston, you know there’s been a separate conversation that has overshadowed all the highlights from Sunday’s game.

During his postgame press conference, Houston Texans head coach was asked how he and the team managed to block out all the outside noise from reporters and fans surrounding their loss to the Seattle Seahawks, in which the offensive execution looked abysmal at best.

“Really doesn’t matter about outside noise,” said Ryans. “We hear a lot about that every time you lose. Everybody wants to come up with something. Get rid of everybody, fire everybody if you lose a game, go out and don’t play well. The noise is just a lot of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Here in this room (team meeting), as a team, we stick together, and we know it’s only about us.

“You never let the outside noise creep in and control who we are. We know who we are, we know what we’re about. We know the formula and what it takes to go win games. We understand that the outside noise is just noise. We would never go ask anybody who is giving the noise… We would never go ask them their opinion about how to game plan or how to play football. So, we keep that in-house and we go and press forward, and we go out and play good football. That’s what it’s about.”

Some media members were dissatisfied with Ryan’s postgame response and asked for further clarification on Monday, which led to a heated exchange.

The third-year head coach was asked about the difficulty of ignoring outside noise, whether it is positive or negative.

“It really doesn’t matter,” Ryans responded. Here you can see there’s a lot of negative talk about us. We get it. I hear people try to give it to me all the time. I get it. But it really doesn’t matter. Again, I talk about it. Everybody wants to write a hot story and most of the time it’s negative stuff that people want to talk about.

“Nobody wants to talk about the positive stuff that happens. Again, if you feed off of that and you’re riding the pendulum of, ‘Oh, we’re great because we won. Oh, we suck because we lost.’ That’s our business. I get it. But that’s the nature of it. We keep moving forward. It doesn’t drive anything. It means nothing, literally nothing, to what we’re about. It does nothing to drive our team. We just got to go out and play good football.”

What turned the press conference completely upside down was the follow-up question from the reporter who wanted Ryans to elaborate on whether he feels the Texans never get any public praise from local media members.

“Guys, what’s your question,” said Ryans. “I said that’s what people thrive on, is the negative stuff. I said people thrive on the negative. You guys are good. We’re playing football. You talk about outside noise. I’ll say it again, it doesn’t matter.

“Good, bad, it doesn’t change how we prepare. It doesn’t change our week of preparation. We’re going to work. We’re going to work our best to gameplan our best and go out and play good football.”

In all fairness, after every win or loss, Ryans faces the media and answers all questions. He takes responsibility as the head coach during tough times and gives praise when things are going well, as they have the past two seasons with the Texans winning consecutive AFC South titles. 

With Houston set to face one of its most formidable opponents, the Denver Broncos, at NRG Stadium this Sunday, the focus should be on how to stop the Broncos’ offense or on carrying over the offensive momentum from the 49ers game.

Yet, it doesn’t seem like the “Noise” narratives are going to stop anytime soon.