5 winners and 4 losers from the Texans’ win over the Bengals

The Texans and Bengals faced off in the first real Thursday Night Football game of the season — filled with Color Rush uniforms and bad football.

Both teams headed into the game having had miserable Week 1 performances. The Texans benched Tom Savage in a 29-7 loss to the Jaguars, and the Bengals got shut out, 20-0, against the Ravens. On a short week of rest, one team was going to come out feeling better about itself, and the other, not so much.

Thursday, Deshaun Watson made his first start, and the Bengals were hoping to finally score their first touchdown of the season. That didn’t happen for the Bengals, whose only scores were a trio of field goals by Randy Bullock. They fell to the Texans, 13-9, at home.

Here are the winners and losers from the matchup.

John Ross — the NFL Combine’s 40-yard dash king — made his NFL debut on Thursday night. It didn’t get off to a great start. On his first touch, Kareem Jackson popped the ball loose.

It fell right into the hands of Jadeveon Clowney:

Clowney took the ball down to the 20-yard line, and the Texans soon got their first points of the game with a field goal.

Unfortunately for Ross, he wasn’t able to get a second chance at glory like Kareem Hunt did last week.

There weren’t a whole lot of Bengals highlights in this one. If there was going to be one though, you had to figure it was going to come from A.J. Green.

But you may not have expected three Texans to be on him while making a leaping catch:

Green finished the game with five catches and 67 yards.

The Bengals looked like they might actually score a touchdown at one point (they didn’t) until Tyler Eifert basically ruined it.

Eifert, who was wide open in the back of the end zone, was calling for the football. Except he was calling for it while he was out of bounds — way out of bounds:

He established himself back in, but you can’t be the first to touch the football after that, so he was called for illegal touching. The Bengals were forced to settle for a field goal because of it.

Deshaun Watson was making his first NFL start on Thursday, and Geno Atkins gave him a taste of what getting swept off your feet by a two-time All-Pro feels like:

However ...

Watson, just as he’s done in the past, was able to answer that big hit with his first career rushing touchdown.

He took this one 49 yards to the house, as he weaved through the Bengals defense. He even got a nice stiff arm in there too:

That’s probably not going to be the last time we see that.

The Bengals got the ball back with seconds left. They did their best attempt to complete a Cal-Stanford miracle finish, but J.J. Watt is not as forgiving or helpful as a marching band:

Andy Dalton would get a mean mug for a receiver setting him up like that. If Russell Bodine did the same, you really couldn’t blame him. Watt shook his soul.

The Bengals have played eight quarters of football this season. They’ve gone eight quarters without scoring a touchdown.

They were understandably upset:

Hector is correct, that sadness quadruple box doesn’t happen very often. But through two weeks of the NFL season, the Bengals have earned it.

Dalton played a bad game on Thursday night. He was 20-of-35 passing with 224 yards and no touchdowns. The Bengals offense was just a drag to watch.

Dalton wasn’t happy with the game, and it showed, resulting in our first meme from Thursday Night Football:

I mean ...