J.J. Watt rankles Andy Dalton by his 'Red Rider BB Gun' postgame swipe

— -- CINCINNATI -- Barely an hour after Monday night's game at Paul Brown Stadium, Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt and Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton got into a public war of words.

It was during an on-field interview with ESPN's Lisa Salters following the Texans' 10-6 win over the Bengals when Watt took a shot at Dalton's "Red Rifle" nickname, comparing the passer to a kids' toy gun.

"Our goal was to come out here and make the Red Rifle look like a Red Rider BB Gun, and I think we did that," Watt said. "He is a great player and they are a great team, but [Monday night] our coaches put together a great game plan, we executed the game plan, everybody did their job.

"It wasn't pretty. I mean, it was 10-6. That is a great football team over there but we were able to do some great things on defense to help stop them to only two field goals."

It's unclear how Dalton found out about Watt's words, but he was quite impassioned when asked about them during his news conference several minutes later.

"I'm disappointed in him because of the integrity of this game," Dalton said. "I have a lot of respect for him. He's a really good player. There are a lot of kids and people who look up to him, and for him to make comments like that, he's just showing that's acceptable to say that kind of stuff. It's disappointing for one of the best players in this league to come out and say something like that, so that's all I'm going to say about that.

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"He's a good player, but for him to be one of the best in this league and to show that integrity, it shows what he's about, and that's disappointing."

Dalton was 22-for-38 with 197 yards passing in the loss, which canceled the Bengals' hopes of an undefeated season, and dropped them to 8-1. This was the first time since last December that Dalton didn't complete a touchdown pass in a game.

Watt was unable to sack Dalton in the teams' previous meeting, but he did have one second-half sack Monday for an 8-yard loss.

"I'm pretty excited," Watt said. "It was an incredible team win."