The Texans played well enough to win today. For the first time this season, the offense looked competent, and at times even downright good. After looking like a middle school quarterback for the first two weeks, Matt Schaub played as if he belonged with the big kids. Unlike the first two weeks, Schaub made good decisions with the football. That said, he didn't get too cautious, taking several calculated shots down the field and the result was that the Texans hit on a couple of big plays. Schaub also showed me some moxy that I frankly didn't know he had when he led an effective two minute drill that set up a Chris Brown field goal with 6 seconds remaining to force overtime. Schaub's performance today should, at least for the moment, silence any critics (myself having been one of them) who wondered (with good reason) whether Schaub has the "right stuff" to start in the National Football League.
A look at the Texans defensive performance against the Jags leaves fans with far less to be happy about. The Texans clearly have some personnel issues on the defensive side of the ball that are going to need to be addressed in the upcoming off-seasons, but I don't think it was the defenses' lack of talent that doomed the Texans to failure today. Yes, they were awful. But if you go back and you look at the game, you realize that there was a point when the defense could have won the game. That point, of course, came around the two minute mark with the Texans up four points. Jacksonville had driven the ball into the red zone, but the Texans defense stepped up and forced 4th and nine...stop the Jags and the Texans win.
This is of course all very obvious to anyone who watched, coached, or played in the game. But that's the thing, as the players for both teams approached the line on that 4th down, they knew that the game was on the line. Every single Texan on the field knew that if they could get a stop, they would seal the victory. It was a chance to win the game, right then and there.
In the NFL, the really good teams to give second chances. When they smell blood, they go in for the kill. The Texans had a chance to bury the dagger and end the game, and they couldn't do it. That it was 4th and nine makes it all the more painful...but I would make the same point if it had been 4th and three. Good teams get that stop on fourth down and end the game, right then and there.
So yes, the Texans did send the game to overtime and lose then. But the Texans didn't lose the game in OT, they lost it on 4th and nine. The Texans have enough talented players to be a fairly good team, but they lack killer instinct. In the NFL, you have to bury the dagger the first chance you get because more often than not, if you give your opponent a second chance, they will burn you. FINISH.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Advice for Gary Kubiak: Prepare for worst, hope for best
Yesterday afternoon, electricity returned to the Golinkin household for the first time since Ike so rudely turned out our (and the rest of the cities) lights. Unfortunately, my family was driving back from Austin when it happened and thus they were not able to reconfigure my Slingbox so that I could watch yesterday's ridiculous debacle live on my computer. I was pretty pissed about it yesterday before the game, but now I wonder if God was simply trying to spare me the stress that actually seeing yesterdays performance would have inevitably caused me to feel.
Since I followed the game via NFL.com's game-tracker, I obviously can't really speak too authoritatively on the subject of just how shitty they actually were, but from the looks of it, Matt Schaub and the offense pretty much blew. Anyone who has followed the NFL even casually for any period of time knows that you can't win games if you don't score touchdowns. The Houston Texans are a franchise plagued by this inability. They have been since the damn franchise came back to H-Town in '02. Chris Brown is a fantastic kicker and I know this because we use him so god-damn much. But yesterday....ohhhhhh yesterday, the Texans set a new standard of incompetence when it comes to "not being able to put the ball in the hole." 1 touchdown in six trips to the red zone. Are you fu---ing kidding me. And even worse, only twelve bloody points. Not to tell you what you already know, but 12 points (including a touchdown and a missed extra point) in six trips means that not only did the Texans not score touchdowns (which is what good teams do)....they only scored on 3/6 possessions. Every team will occasionally turn it over deep in a drive...but 3/6. Someone should lose their job.
As I said, I didn't actually get to watch the game, so its pretty hard for me to judge just how bad they were....but from looking at yesterday's offensive statistices, it's hard for me to imagine that Matt Schaub played anything less than appallingly. I know that some balls that should have been brought in were dropped and I know that at least one of those drops took points on the board, but I'm sorry, if a team goes to the red zone six different times and only gets 12 points out of it, the boatload of responsibility has to go to the guy under center. I like Matt Schaub. I think he can play in this league. But I am going to go ahead and echo the sentiment that Richard Justice expressed in his column in this morning's Houston Chronicle which is essentially that its time for Gary Kubiak to take a good long look at his quarterbacks and consider the possibility that Sage Rosenfels gives the Texans a better chance to win.
Don't misinterpret what I am saying. I am not saying that Matt Schaub should not start next week's game. I think he should, but his leash should be next to non-existent. If Schaub doesn't play a good first quarter next week, I think its time to try something new. In preparation for the possibility that, Sage should be taking forty percent of the snaps with the first team. If Matt steps up and plays well next week, then Sage can return to his backup role and return to taking limited reps with the big boys, but Coach Kubiak needs to prepare two quarterbacks to play this week, not one.
I recognize that upping Sage's reps in practice this week will cause all of the confusion and speculation among the players and media that traditionally accompanies quarterback controversies in the league, but at least for a week, it's the right thing to do. What theoretically is supposed to separate Schaub from Sage is Schaub's ability to make good decisions with the football. That means getting the ball out quickly so as to avoid sacks and not turning it over. On the other hand, the rational for not starting Sage is that even though he has a big arm and throws a lot of touchdowns, Rosenfels takes a lot of sacks and turns the ball over too much. But if Schaub isn't protecting the football, then Sage is clearly the better option at the position. If both of their quarterbacks turn the ball over, the Texans might as well play Sage, who will create some big plays to go along with the boneheaded ones. Right now, the Texans are just getting the boneheaded ones.
So its time to up Sage's reps. If Schaub leads the Texans down the field and looks like he's in command early, then you leave him in. If he has a solid game, then you re-anoint him "the starter." But in the mean time, its high time the Texans start preparing Sage Rosenfels to be this teams starting quarterback.
Since I followed the game via NFL.com's game-tracker, I obviously can't really speak too authoritatively on the subject of just how shitty they actually were, but from the looks of it, Matt Schaub and the offense pretty much blew. Anyone who has followed the NFL even casually for any period of time knows that you can't win games if you don't score touchdowns. The Houston Texans are a franchise plagued by this inability. They have been since the damn franchise came back to H-Town in '02. Chris Brown is a fantastic kicker and I know this because we use him so god-damn much. But yesterday....ohhhhhh yesterday, the Texans set a new standard of incompetence when it comes to "not being able to put the ball in the hole." 1 touchdown in six trips to the red zone. Are you fu---ing kidding me. And even worse, only twelve bloody points. Not to tell you what you already know, but 12 points (including a touchdown and a missed extra point) in six trips means that not only did the Texans not score touchdowns (which is what good teams do)....they only scored on 3/6 possessions. Every team will occasionally turn it over deep in a drive...but 3/6. Someone should lose their job.
As I said, I didn't actually get to watch the game, so its pretty hard for me to judge just how bad they were....but from looking at yesterday's offensive statistices, it's hard for me to imagine that Matt Schaub played anything less than appallingly. I know that some balls that should have been brought in were dropped and I know that at least one of those drops took points on the board, but I'm sorry, if a team goes to the red zone six different times and only gets 12 points out of it, the boatload of responsibility has to go to the guy under center. I like Matt Schaub. I think he can play in this league. But I am going to go ahead and echo the sentiment that Richard Justice expressed in his column in this morning's Houston Chronicle which is essentially that its time for Gary Kubiak to take a good long look at his quarterbacks and consider the possibility that Sage Rosenfels gives the Texans a better chance to win.
Don't misinterpret what I am saying. I am not saying that Matt Schaub should not start next week's game. I think he should, but his leash should be next to non-existent. If Schaub doesn't play a good first quarter next week, I think its time to try something new. In preparation for the possibility that, Sage should be taking forty percent of the snaps with the first team. If Matt steps up and plays well next week, then Sage can return to his backup role and return to taking limited reps with the big boys, but Coach Kubiak needs to prepare two quarterbacks to play this week, not one.
I recognize that upping Sage's reps in practice this week will cause all of the confusion and speculation among the players and media that traditionally accompanies quarterback controversies in the league, but at least for a week, it's the right thing to do. What theoretically is supposed to separate Schaub from Sage is Schaub's ability to make good decisions with the football. That means getting the ball out quickly so as to avoid sacks and not turning it over. On the other hand, the rational for not starting Sage is that even though he has a big arm and throws a lot of touchdowns, Rosenfels takes a lot of sacks and turns the ball over too much. But if Schaub isn't protecting the football, then Sage is clearly the better option at the position. If both of their quarterbacks turn the ball over, the Texans might as well play Sage, who will create some big plays to go along with the boneheaded ones. Right now, the Texans are just getting the boneheaded ones.
So its time to up Sage's reps. If Schaub leads the Texans down the field and looks like he's in command early, then you leave him in. If he has a solid game, then you re-anoint him "the starter." But in the mean time, its high time the Texans start preparing Sage Rosenfels to be this teams starting quarterback.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
I hate hurricane reporters
The few of you that read my blog regularly (God bless all of you, even the ones that send the hate mail) know that I am a student at Colgate University and that as a result, I spend 3/4 of the year in Hamilton, New York. I will be the first to tell you that I love Colgate and getting to go here is the biggest privilege in the world. But three days ago, I experienced for the first time I felt like I was away from home at a time when I needed to be there. As most of you know (since you lived it), Houston took it on the chin early this morning as Hurricane Ike came roaring through the city. Most of you won't read this for a couple of days, or weeks, because most of the fourth largest city in America will be without power for a while. The first paragraph of this story reads like a Rick Reilly sympathy piece...you know, one of those sort of feel good, sort of compassionate articles following a disaster about the resilience of the place or people immediately affected by the disaster, but I can't write that story...not about this...I'm from Houston....
My Mom called me on Thursday and left a message on my voicemail. It was clearly not a call just to chat. And she didn't say it, but on some level you could hear in her voice that she was scared, and she was calling trying to figure out why I hadn't called...the unspoken message was "aren't you scared for us?" When I called back, I sort of snapped. She told me that they weren't going to have power for two weeks (as it turns out, she may have been right) and blah blah blah blah blah. And I was an asshole. I told her to stop being hysterical...that they weren't victims yet. I was essentially a real asshole at a time when she clearly was afraid. I've been trying to figure out why I reacted that way, and I think I now have put my finger on it. You see, I'm from Houston. I've spent my whole life there. I've gone through all the Houston bs...the sports teams that break your heart, the crappy weather, the fatness, the smog, the damn traffic, and the yearly tropical storm/ hurricane. I evacuated during Rita (ok...so I didn't exactly evacuate. I more refused to change my plan to go to Austin City Limits and so my buddy and I drove to Austin with all the people that evacuated...but it still took like 15 hours so I like to think that I evacuated), and I still remember staying up through the night with the ridiculous "WaterVac"vacuuming up the water outside of my father's home office during Tropical Storm Allison so the office wouldn't flood. Basically, my whole life, what Houston has gone through, I have gone through with it. But this week, for the first time, I wasn't there for my city. As my city was poised to stare down a monster called Ike, I was sitting comfortably in New York reading about the storm on "the Drudge Report" and watching CNN reporters in red panchos stand in front of 45 south signs and talk about the status of my city. I was an outsider.
I am not naive enough to believe that my being in Houston would alleviate any of the pain that mother nature inflicted on my city this morning. But I can tell you why I snapped at my Mom...because I didn't like watching CNN to get news about the place I lived in. It sounds ridiculous to say that I feel helpless here, but that's the case. My family is terribly lucky in that our house was not seriously damaged by the storm, but I know a lot of people who were not so lucky. If I were in Houston, I would be able to do more than just say sorry, that sucks. I would be able to pick up the glass from the windows blown out by the storm and pick up all of the trash in the streets. Nothing that significant, but I swear to you, its different when your there. When the storm hits when you are there, you are a part of a community. When you are way far away, you can only watch some jackass CNN reporter wearing a red pancho talk about your community like they are actually a part of it, and I can't tell you how frustrating that is.
Shit got real this week on the home front, and I'm not there to play a role in bringing the city back to it's feet. So all I can do at the moment is send my thoughts and my prayers to my fellow Houstonians. Our city is great, you are the reason it is great. We will not be off our feet for long. Go Astros, Go Texans, Go Houston. I'll be watching from afar.
PS-I know you don't have power so you can't really see all of this, but if you were to have tuned into CNN last night, you would have seem some dumbass in a Red Pancho reporting live from the Hurricane in Houston. Literally, they go live to these reporters, who inevitably report that "it is very windy." Can't we figure that out without having someone there. Is in not ludicrous for them to stand out there only so that they can tell us that it is "windy." I find this to be very upsetting and if you happen to read this soon and you happen to see a moron in front of a videocamera wearing a CNN pancho, I would owe you a debt of gratitude if you would punch them in the face for me.
My Mom called me on Thursday and left a message on my voicemail. It was clearly not a call just to chat. And she didn't say it, but on some level you could hear in her voice that she was scared, and she was calling trying to figure out why I hadn't called...the unspoken message was "aren't you scared for us?" When I called back, I sort of snapped. She told me that they weren't going to have power for two weeks (as it turns out, she may have been right) and blah blah blah blah blah. And I was an asshole. I told her to stop being hysterical...that they weren't victims yet. I was essentially a real asshole at a time when she clearly was afraid. I've been trying to figure out why I reacted that way, and I think I now have put my finger on it. You see, I'm from Houston. I've spent my whole life there. I've gone through all the Houston bs...the sports teams that break your heart, the crappy weather, the fatness, the smog, the damn traffic, and the yearly tropical storm/ hurricane. I evacuated during Rita (ok...so I didn't exactly evacuate. I more refused to change my plan to go to Austin City Limits and so my buddy and I drove to Austin with all the people that evacuated...but it still took like 15 hours so I like to think that I evacuated), and I still remember staying up through the night with the ridiculous "WaterVac"vacuuming up the water outside of my father's home office during Tropical Storm Allison so the office wouldn't flood. Basically, my whole life, what Houston has gone through, I have gone through with it. But this week, for the first time, I wasn't there for my city. As my city was poised to stare down a monster called Ike, I was sitting comfortably in New York reading about the storm on "the Drudge Report" and watching CNN reporters in red panchos stand in front of 45 south signs and talk about the status of my city. I was an outsider.
I am not naive enough to believe that my being in Houston would alleviate any of the pain that mother nature inflicted on my city this morning. But I can tell you why I snapped at my Mom...because I didn't like watching CNN to get news about the place I lived in. It sounds ridiculous to say that I feel helpless here, but that's the case. My family is terribly lucky in that our house was not seriously damaged by the storm, but I know a lot of people who were not so lucky. If I were in Houston, I would be able to do more than just say sorry, that sucks. I would be able to pick up the glass from the windows blown out by the storm and pick up all of the trash in the streets. Nothing that significant, but I swear to you, its different when your there. When the storm hits when you are there, you are a part of a community. When you are way far away, you can only watch some jackass CNN reporter wearing a red pancho talk about your community like they are actually a part of it, and I can't tell you how frustrating that is.
Shit got real this week on the home front, and I'm not there to play a role in bringing the city back to it's feet. So all I can do at the moment is send my thoughts and my prayers to my fellow Houstonians. Our city is great, you are the reason it is great. We will not be off our feet for long. Go Astros, Go Texans, Go Houston. I'll be watching from afar.
PS-I know you don't have power so you can't really see all of this, but if you were to have tuned into CNN last night, you would have seem some dumbass in a Red Pancho reporting live from the Hurricane in Houston. Literally, they go live to these reporters, who inevitably report that "it is very windy." Can't we figure that out without having someone there. Is in not ludicrous for them to stand out there only so that they can tell us that it is "windy." I find this to be very upsetting and if you happen to read this soon and you happen to see a moron in front of a videocamera wearing a CNN pancho, I would owe you a debt of gratitude if you would punch them in the face for me.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Nervous as hell...and loving it
It is now the eve of the Texans regular season opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and I couldn't be more petrified. I fully recognize that it is a little unreasonable to be nervous about a team's first game when you are not a member of the team or that team's coaching staff/ front office (ie when you are not a person that has played any significant role in how the team will perform tomorrow) but I can't help it. Before big games, I simply get nervous. When the Astros have big games, I spend totally ludicrous amounts of time worrying about the game. Same with the Rockets. This has always been the case with those two particular franchises. However, tonight is the first time I have ever been nervous about the Texans, and I think it sort of marks a watershed moment for the franchise because I think it's indicative of something larger, and more important. I think the fact that I am nervous is a sign that the Texans are actually relevant and important for the first time in franchise history.
It's not just about me. I am not dumb enough to think that the fact that I am nervous about tomorrows game is "the sign" that the Texans are for real. But I do think that the fact that I (a well informed and serious fan) am nervous about tomorrows game probably means that many of you feel the same way for the first time. And this really is significant because even the most unreasonable fan doesn't get worried about things that he has no expectations for. Nerves are a product of hopes, and more importantly, expectations. I have always hoped that the Texans would be good, but I have never expected anything but mediocrity from them, and as a result, I never worried about games. I just watched and hoped that they would win. Don't get me wrong, I wanted them to win, badly, and I regularly flipped when they failed. But in my heart of hearts, I never expected them to be good. I never got nervous because I always expected them to fail.
That I'm nervous means something significant. It means that in my heart of hearts, I don't just hope the Texans will succeed. It means that on some level, I expect them to. My nerves are a sign that I am afraid they will disappoint me. I am afraid that tomorrow, and this season, that the Texans will break my heart. In a twisted sort of way, this is a wonderful thing because it really does mean that for the first time, the Texans are relevant and real. Cheering for a team that you don't expect anything from isn't really cheering at all because it doesn't involve full emotional attachment. What separates that bandwagon jumpers to the real fans is that real fans are fully invested...if their team wins, they get the glory, but if their team loses, they feel the pain. Until now, cheering for the Texans has been like cheering for the underdog of a game you have no interest in. When that team wins, you are happy for like half an hour, and when they lose you simply shrug it off since you never really cared about them in the first place. For the first time, the Texans can hurt me. And I love it.
It's not just about me. I am not dumb enough to think that the fact that I am nervous about tomorrows game is "the sign" that the Texans are for real. But I do think that the fact that I (a well informed and serious fan) am nervous about tomorrows game probably means that many of you feel the same way for the first time. And this really is significant because even the most unreasonable fan doesn't get worried about things that he has no expectations for. Nerves are a product of hopes, and more importantly, expectations. I have always hoped that the Texans would be good, but I have never expected anything but mediocrity from them, and as a result, I never worried about games. I just watched and hoped that they would win. Don't get me wrong, I wanted them to win, badly, and I regularly flipped when they failed. But in my heart of hearts, I never expected them to be good. I never got nervous because I always expected them to fail.
That I'm nervous means something significant. It means that in my heart of hearts, I don't just hope the Texans will succeed. It means that on some level, I expect them to. My nerves are a sign that I am afraid they will disappoint me. I am afraid that tomorrow, and this season, that the Texans will break my heart. In a twisted sort of way, this is a wonderful thing because it really does mean that for the first time, the Texans are relevant and real. Cheering for a team that you don't expect anything from isn't really cheering at all because it doesn't involve full emotional attachment. What separates that bandwagon jumpers to the real fans is that real fans are fully invested...if their team wins, they get the glory, but if their team loses, they feel the pain. Until now, cheering for the Texans has been like cheering for the underdog of a game you have no interest in. When that team wins, you are happy for like half an hour, and when they lose you simply shrug it off since you never really cared about them in the first place. For the first time, the Texans can hurt me. And I love it.
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