Through the first eight games of the season, the Los Angeles Rams were used to coming out firing and putting up points in bunches early. That wasn’t nearly the case on Sunday against the Houston Texans.

After the first 15 minutes of the game, the Rams had 6 yards of total offense. Thanks to the defense creating a turnover, they somehow held a three-point lead entering the second quarter.

Three possessions, six yards. That’s not what you come to expect from the NFL’s highest-scoring offense, but it’s exactly how the Rams started the game. Sean McVay was disgusted, to say the least, calling the team’s performance in the first quarter “a total pukefest.”

“We had six yards of offense in the first quarter,” McVay told Mike Silver of NFL Network. “Six yards! At that point, I thought we were well on our way to a 30-yard game. … It was a total pukefest. I was ready to crawl into a hole.”

But McVay didn’t crawl into a hole. He did just the opposite, actually. He rallied his players and reminded them that they have the most explosive and dominant offense in the NFL. That unit still didn’t show up in the second quarter, however, though it was certainly better than the start they had to the game.

The Rams began to string together a few better drives, totaling 125 yards of offense in the second quarter, but they still failed to find the end zone. Fortunately, Greg Zuerlein drilled 33- and 50-yard field goals, the latter of which came with 14 seconds before the half, to give the Rams a 9-7 lead after two quarters.

McVay, unsurprisingly, still wasn’t satisfied. Here’s what he told his players in the locker room during halftime.

“Well guys, we can’t play any worse — and I can’t put you in any worse positions — and we’re still up 9-7,” McVay recounted. “The good news is, if we don’t piss down our legs we’ll get it together and win this game. We’re out of sync, and one guy in particular is killing us. So now let’s find a way to fix it and go back to doing what we do.”

It was in the second half that the Rams really kicked it up a notch. They outscored the Texans 24-0 in the final 30 minutes, racking up 312 yards in the process. The defense’s ability to create turnovers certainly helped the offense’s cause, but Jared Goff and Robert Woods did plenty themselves, too.

At one point, the Rams scored 14 points in 19 seconds to put the game away, both of which came eight minutes after Goff hit Woods for a 94-yard touchdown – the Rams’ longest play in 53 years.

That touchdown provided a spark offensively, and Los Angeles never turned back from that point forward.

McVay blamed himself for the Rams only scoring nine points on 131 yards in the first half, which is what we’ve come to expect from the first-year head coach. He’s all about accountability, even when it comes to himself.

“It is frustrating because you’re responsible – because there was a lot of things when you look back at it that I didn’t do a very good job of putting our players in the good spots,” he said during his press conference. “You look at that as your responsibility as a coach and especially as a play caller. I thought the guys overcame some bad calls, even earlier on in that game.”