DETROIT — Deshaun Wat­son dropped back in a pro­tect­ed pock­et at mid­field and per­fect­ly loft­ed one of his four touch­down pass­es, con­nect­ing with Will Fuller in stride just before he reached the end zone.

Houston’s star quar­ter­back made it look easy, and the Detroit Lions did their part to not put up much of a fight.

Wat­son had a pair of go-ahead touch­down pass­es in the first half and threw for two more scores in the fourth quar­ter to help Hous­ton pull away and beat Detroit 41–25 Thursday.

And still, he wasn’t satisfied.

“It was def­i­nite­ly good, but I missed two touch­downs,” Wat­son said.

The dynam­ic quar­ter­back fin­ished 17 of 25 for 318 yards with four touch­downs and no inter­cep­tions. He has thrown 15 touch­down pass­es with­out get­ting picked off once in the past six games.

“You’ve got to give some cred­it to the guys up front,” inter­im coach Romeo Cren­nel said. “If they give him time, he’s able to make plays. Guys can get open and he can hit them. He has that kind of accuracy.”

Tex­ans star defen­sive end J.J. Watt had an ear­ly pick‑6 and Fuller had six recep­tions for 171 yards and two touch­downs, includ­ing a 40-yard touch­down catch in which it looked like he and Wat­son were all alone on a prac­tice field.

The Tex­ans (4–7) have won two straight for the first time this sea­son and three of their past four games with Crennel.

“That’s good, but we haven’t won enough,” Cren­nel said.

The Lions haven’t, either, and it might cost at least one man his job.

Detroit (4–7) might end the sea­son with inter­im lead­ers after los­ing con­sec­u­tive games for the third time this sea­son, drop­ping coach Matt Patricia’s record to 13–29‑1 and gen­er­al man­ag­er Bob Quinn’s mark to 12 games under .500 over five seasons.

Patri­cia was pep­pered with ques­tions about his job being in jeop­ardy, and evad­ed each query.

“My focus every day is on the guys in that lock­er room and work­ing as hard as I can to help them be suc­cess­ful,” he said.

The Lions retained Patri­cia and Quinn for this sea­son and own­er­ship said there was an expec­ta­tion they con­tend for the play­offs by play­ing in mean­ing­ful games in Decem­ber. And, that seems high­ly unlikely.

Detroit quar­ter­back Matthew Stafford said the scruti­ny on Patri­cia has not appeared to affect him.

“He’s the same guy every day,” Stafford said. “The guy comes to work, grinds, and wants to win like all of us. He’s a pas­sion­ate coach, who loves the game. I’ve had a lot of respect with how he’s con­tin­ued to come to work.”

Detroit, which was com­ing off its first shutout loss since 2009, scored first before col­laps­ing with turnovers on two straight snaps and three con­sec­u­tive pos­ses­sions in the first half. Houston’s defense entered the game with an NFL-low five forced turnovers.

Watt put his hands up on a rush just in time to pick off Stafford’s pass and returned it 19 yards for a touch­down in the first quarter.

“I saw he was going to throw quick­ly so I stopped rush­ing and jumped up,” Watt recalled. “It hit me square in the hands.”

On Detroit’s next snap, Jonathan Williams fum­bled and Hous­ton took advan­tage with Watson’s 2‑yard touch­down pass to C.J. Pro­sise to go ahead 13–6.

“Three turnovers ear­ly in the game killed the momen­tum,” Stafford said.

Watson’s 33-yard touch­down pass to Duke John­son gave the Tex­ans a 20–14 lead ear­ly in the sec­ond quarter.

Watson’s first touch­down pass to Fuller ear­ly in the fourth put Hous­ton ahead 34–17. He con­nect­ed again with Fuller, who was wide open, with a 34-yard touch­down on a trick play after hand­ing the ball off and get­ting it back on a lateral.

Stafford was 28 of 42 for 295 yards with a 14-yard touch­down pass to Mohamed Sanu in the fourth and an inter­cep­tion that Watt returned for a score. Detroit’s Adri­an Peter­son had a pair of 1‑yard touch­down runs in the first half — and tried to take some blame off Patri­cia for the lat­est loss.

“It has noth­ing to do with the head coach,” Peter­son said.

BROTHERLY LOVE

Detroit defen­sive back C.J. Moore and Hous­ton defen­sive back A.J. Moore, iden­ti­cal twins, embraced before the game and played against each oth­er for the first time.

ELITE COMPANY

Watt became the third NFL play­er to have at least 100 sacks and six touch­downs in a career. The oth­ers are Jason Tay­lor and Julius Peppers.

TRUMP’S TAKE

Wat­son and Stafford were among a hand­ful of play­ers on both teams that took a knee dur­ing the nation­al anthem, a social jus­tice state­ment that didn’t sit well with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

“No thanks!” Trump tweeted.

INJURY REPORT

Tex­ans: FB Cullen Gillaspia (back) and WR Ken­ny Stills (quadri­cep) were inactive.

Lions: CB Desmond Tru­fant aggra­vat­ed a ham­string injury in the sec­ond quar­ter in anoth­er set­back for a sec­ondary that had rook­ie CB Jeff Oku­dah (shoul­der) and CB Mike Ford (con­cus­sion) inac­tive. RB D’Andre Swift (con­cus­sion) along with WRs Ken­ny Gol­la­day (hip) also missed the game.

UP NEXT

Tex­ans host Indi­anapo­lis on Dec. 6.

Lions play at Chica­go on Dec. 6.