Humbled Texans look to improve after 1st loss

Coach Gary Kubiak said the Texans have to be better if they expect to beat the Ravens, who improved to 6-0 against Houston with a win in the second round of the playoffs last season.

"Some undisciplined things that we did, that's our biggest concern today," he said. "But I think across the board all three phases wasn't good enough. Today we've got a lot of corrections to make and lots of soul searching to do, especially with this team we've got coming in here this week. It wasn't one thing. It was a bunch of things."

Though Kubiak has challenged every member of the team to improve this week, his biggest concerns are special teams, the running game and protecting quarterback Matt Schaub.

He's been disappointed with the play of the special teams for a while and Sunday night's performance was no different. The unit gave the Packers a first down twice because of penalties on fourth down plays, which both eventually led to touchdowns.

"We gave them two possessions with a couple of penalties, lack of discipline type penalties," Kubiak said. "Something's got to get better. If our football team is going to get better, (special teams are) going to have to get a (whole) a lot better."

The Texans weren't able to establish their running game on Sunday and Arian Foster and Ben Tate combined for just 76 yards on 20 carries. Kubiak acknowledged that those numbers were partly because Houston got down early and had to throw more, but didn't want to use that as an excuse.

"The end result is we're not running the ball very good at all," he said. "It's not going to change how we believe and what we think we have to do to win ... we've just got to look really hard at it and hopefully change it this week."

The Ravens are also 5-1, but their defense has struggled this season and is giving up more than 136 yards rushing a game. Things could be even more difficult for Baltimore this week with star linebacker Ray Lewis out for the season with an arm injury.