Posts Tagged ‘Matt Schaub’

The 2011 Houston Texans: Great Season, Disappointing End

Monday, January 16th, 2012

December 26, 2010: After watching the Texans lose to the Denver Broncos, making it four losses in a row to fall to 5-10, a despondent fan in the greater Houston area is preparing to commit suicide when the Angel of Football Future descends into his bedroom clothed into the divine light of truth. “Stop!” cried the angel. “I have been sent unto you to save you from despair by bestowing a vision of the 2011 Texans!”

Fan: You mean there’s hope? Does Arian Foster lead the league in rushing again?

Angel: No, he injures his hamstring and misses the first few games.

Fan: What, Arian goes down? Crap! At least tell me that Andre Johnson leads the league in touchdown receptions!

Angel: No, he also has a hamstring injury, and only appears in seven games before the regular season ends.

Fan: Both of Houston’s top offensive weapons suffer hamstring injuries? It just gets worse! Does Mario Williams finally lead the league in sacks?

Angel: No, Mario goes down with a torn pectoral muscle and is lost for the year after the fifth game.

Fan: Gah! Now you’re just tormenting me! Top performers on both offense and defense injured! I suppose you’re going to tell me that Special Teams are awful as well?

Angel: Actually, your rookie punter plays great–

Fan: Finally, a break!

Angel: –but then he’s lost for the year with a non-contact injury.

Fan: Agggggh! It’s like a nightmare you can’t wake from! At least tell me that’s the worst of it, that no more major Texan players go down?

Angel: Uh….

Fan: Wait, more injuries? Mario, Arian, Andre, that’s all the Texan’s superstars…except…

Angel: Uh…

Fan: No! Not Matt Schaub! Tell me Schaub stays healthy!

Angel: Sorry. Albert Haynesworth breaks his foot in the tenth game.

Fan: Bastard! So I suppose Matt Leinart is our starting quarterback for the rest of the season?

Angel: Well, he starts for one game, but he breaks his collarbone just before the half.

Fan: I’m in Hell! I suppose you’re going to tell me we hire some retread QB to lead the team?

Angel: Well, they do sign Jeff Garcia–

Fan: Aggggghhhh! Kill me now!

Angel: And Jake Delhomme does take some in-game snaps…

Fan: WHY, GOD, WHY???? WHY DO YOU HATE THE TEXANS SO MUCH???

Angel: But the starting quarterback for the rest of the season is actually a fifth-round rookie named T.J. Yates.

Fan: I’m dying here! With all that the season must suck hard! What do we finish, 5-11? 4-12?

Angel: No–

Fan: 3-13? 2-14?

Angel: No–

Fan: Aggggggghhhhh! A winless season! We’re as bad as the 2008 Detroit Lions! Life is an unending vale of misery and sorrow!

Angel: No. The Texans go 10-6, win the AFC South and beat the Cincinnati Bengals in their first playoff game ever before losing 20-13 to the Baltimore Ravens on the road.

Fan: What? After all that, our team makes the playoffs and wins a game there? How did we get by Indianapolis?

Angel: Peyton Manning was out for the year with neck surgery and they went 2-14.

Fan: But with Mario out, our defense must have sucked the farts out of dead wildebeest!

Angel: No, after the team hired Wade Phillips and drafted two defense standouts in J. J. Watt and Brooks Reed, the defense went from 30th to 3rd in the league.

Fan: Wow, with all that adversity, that’s a great outcome! A playoff game at Reliant Stadium will rock!

Angel: Indeed it well.

Fan: I guess I won’t kill myself after all! Now, can you give me any hope for the Astros?

Angel: Uh, I think it’s time to end this vision…

Sadly, the Texans’ offense (especially Jacoby Jones) made too many mistake for Houston to make it to the conference finals, but that shouldn’t obscure what a remarkable ride the Texans gave us this season, and what devastating string of injuries they had to overcome to get there. The Texans have both one of the youngest, and one of the best, defenses in the league, and if Schaub. Foster and Johnson can stay healthy, should be serious Superbowl contenders for at least the next few years

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Texans Slaughter Colts 34-7

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

The Texans managed to put together the most dominant half of professional football I’ve ever seen by going up 34-0 in the first half against the Manning-less Colts. The Texans dominated on both sides of the line, Mario Williams got his first sack as an outside linebacker and Ben Tate got his first career touchdown. And Jacoby Jones took a punt return 79 yards for a touchdown, turning what was a rout into a full-blown slaughter.

Alas, there was also the second half, where conservative play-calling and some bone-headed turnovers let the Colts get on the board and prevented the Texans from padding their lead.

Matt Schaub was 17 of 24 with 220 yards. The two interceptions are slightly deceptive, as the first one was a freak tip off Andrew Johnson’s fingers.

I expected the Texans to win this game, but I didn’t expect it to be a laugher. The offense is still plenty potent, but the defense is radically improved from last year’s league-worst unit. Tate’s 100+ yard game proves that last year wasn’t a fluke, and yes, the offensive line is that good at opening holes, with or without Arian Foster (who sat out the game with a tweaked hamstring).

if they can harness the intensity of the first half and avoid the miscues of the second, not only will they make the playoffs (especially in a weekend AFC South), they should actually be able to make some noise there. Of course, Texan fans felt that after last year’s opening day victory over the Colts, so we’ll see how they do against a murder’s row of an early schedule that has them visiting New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Baltimore in the first six weeks of the season.

But all in all, I feel very good about my bet with Dwight.

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A Most Improbable Texans Win

Sunday, September 19th, 2010

The Texans 30-27 overtime win over the Washington Redskins has to count as one of the most improbable of recent memory. If you had showed up at a Las Vegas betting window right after Donovan McNabb’s touchdown pass to Chris Cooley made it 27-10, you probably could have gotten some pretty steep odds on a Texans victory.

A few random observations:

  • Those Fantasy Football gurus who suggested sitting Matt Schaub after Arian Foster’s 231 yard day last week have enough egg on their face to feed a family of four omelets for a week. 497 yards passing for Schaub. The Texans are now officially The Team Most likely to Put up Madden Numbers During Any Given Week.
  • Unlike previous years, the Redskins are actually a very solid team (despite Dan Snyder’s best efforts). Given that Philadelphia is also 1-1, and the Cowboys lost again (to the Bears, thanks to two picks by Tony “Perpetually Overrated” Romo), expect them to be in the hunt for the NFC East title for the entire season.
  • The Redskins run defense was much tougher than the Colts, with Arian Foster going from a godlike 231 yards last week to a workman-like 69 yards on 19 carries this week.
  • After two weeks, Houston looks like an honest-to-God playoff team.
  • Three sacks for Mario Williams, for a total of four on the year. I don’t think that anyone can dispute that the Texans got it right in picking him number 1. The Texans defensive line forced McNabb to make amazing throws to dig himself out of third-and-long holes all day.
  • Which, sadly, he made for most of the game. The Texans won’t be a SuperBowl team as long as a weak secondary gives up career passing days for every quarterback they face.
  • The Titans lost. Three turnovers, Vince? (Insert UT fan sigh here) And Chris Johnson gained all of 34 yards. Going to be pretty hard to rack up a 2,500 yard rushing season like that…
  • The Jaguars also lost, which means the Texans now sit alone atop the AFC South for the first time since, well, ever.
  • The Texans aren’t just good, they’re really good, as this was a game they had all but lost before Schaub pulled their chestnuts out of the fire. Come-from-17-points-behind road victories are few and far between in the NFL.
  • The Texans should be favored to beat the Cowboys at home next week. It would be nice if they didn’t dig themselves a 17-point hole at the beginning…

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Houston Texans vs. Tennessee Titans on MNF

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

I have been known to watch football upon occasion. (I know, rooting for laundry.) Like most sports fans, I root for my hometown team, in this case Houston, and my alma mater team, the Texas Longhorns. (Who are doing very well indeed behind Colt McCoy this year. Thanks for asking.)

Of course the team I used to root for, the Houston Oilers, doesn’t exist anymore. The Oilers were a hard-nose, blue-collar team whose misfortune it was to have their heyday (late 70s/early-80s) during the reign of another hard-nose, blue-collar team in their division, the Pittsburg Steelers, who would win four Superbowls while the Oilers won squat. And the reason the Oilers never won anything, or made it to the Superbowl is (at least we bitter ex-Oilers fans like to think) due to owner Bud Adams.

After firing the winningest coach in team history and trading football legend Earl Campbell to New Orleans for a sack of doorknobs, Bud wasn’t done tormenting Houston football fans. After getting Houston taxpayers to pony up $67 million for upgrades to the Astrodome, Adams turned around and said that wasn’t enough, and Houston had to build a new football stadium for him. Houston told him where he could stick it. So Adams took his team (and carpetbag) away to Tennessee, where they became the Titans. (Or, as we in Texas like to call them, the Tennessee Traitors). The Titans promptly got to the Superbowl…and lost. The old Bud Adams magic was still alive!

In fact, I wrote a little song to celebrate the occasion:

The Ballad of the Tennessee Titans
(to the tune of “The Beverly Hillbillies”)

Come listen to a story about a man named Bud
Orneriest football owner ever chewed a wad of cud
His Houston Oilers were as bad as they could be
So he loaded up the team and moved out to Tennessee
Nashville that is. Country music. Grand Ole Opry.

In their Houston days the Oilers were a disgrace
When they weren’t breakin’ hearts they just stunk up the place
To con the Nashville rubes, Bud had to change his game
So he sucked in his pride, and gave them a new name.
Titans, that is. Evil giants. Greek myth.

Well come Y2K, and they’re in the title game.
Reverting back to form, the Ex-Oilers come up lame.
Hey Bud, the Superbowl just ain’t where you oughta be!
Next season they’ll be back to mediocrity.
Don’t come back now, ya hear?

Not long after this, Houston gets an expansion franchise, the Houston Texans, who proceed to suck much of the decade. (They’re in the same division as the Indianapolis Colts, the Jacksonville jaguars and, yes, the Titans.) However, after ditching the inconsistent David Carr for Matt Schaub, and firing Dom Capers and putting Gary Kubiak in his place as coach, the Texans have been on the upswing. Meanwhile, the Titans went from having the best record in 2008 to starting the season with six straight losses in 2009.

Which brings up to the present, when the Texans will be playing the Titans on Monday Night Football. This is by no means a slam dunk (pardon the mixed-sport metaphors) for the Texans, since the Titans have won three straight after putting former Longhorn Vince Young in as quarterback. (“Hey, our team is winless and we have an inhumanly gifted quarterback sitting on the bench. Do you think we should play him?”)

It should be a great game…and another chance to humiliate Bud Adams. (Once he gets over the sting of that $250,000 fine for, ah, digital manipulation.)

And Nashville? Bud is YOUR problem now. No backsies…

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