ATLANTA -- Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing was asked if the 48-21 loss to the Atlanta Falcons embarrassed him.
"Yeah, I'm embarrassed," Cushing said. "Who wants to lose like that?"
Defensive end JJ Watt said his team played "pitiful football."
Coach Bill O'Brien called the performance "terrible."
The silver lining? In four days, the Texans will play again. They'll host the Indianapolis Colts on Thursday night with a chance to replace their dejection from Sunday with a better feeling.
"It's a division game coming up," receiver DeAndre Hopkins said. "It's a big week for us. Put this behind us. NFL is short-term memory."
A normal NFL week involves a Monday of film review and a Tuesday off, followed by game planning beginning Wednesday. This week, though, the Texans will have to dive right into preparations for Indianapolis, without much time to look back.
That can be good, but Texans cornerback Johnathan Joseph sees value in looking back at Sunday's game.
"I think you have to watch it," Joseph said. "You want that bitter taste in your mouth. You want to be upset. You want to go into that game Thursday a little pissed off. It's nothing you can hide from. We're all grown men. I think it's something we can definitely look [at] and learn from."
They'll be looking to figure out how to minimize their turnovers. The Texans had four Sunday, and the Falcons scored off three of them.
"We had [four] turnovers. I had one of them," tight end C.J. Fiedorowicz said. "We just could never get it going. We'd have one first down and stall out. No one was making big plays. If you want to make those big drives, there's got to be at least one big play."
The Texans will be looking to figure out how to decrease the explosive plays they allowed. The Texans gave up pass plays of 55, 44, 24, 19, 18, 16 and 15 yards. They allowed runs of 23, 16 and 13 yards.
"We had a lot of missed tackles out there. That’s probably the biggest thing," defensive end Jared Crick said. "We’ll watch the film and see what schemes are being run against us. ... Everything’s correctable. In a few days? We’ll have to work hard at it, but it’s doable. We got to if we want to come out and win next week."