Texans Can’t Slam The Door On Monday Night Football
November 24th, 2009 | by Mike Kerns |Well, what else can I say about this? I felt it all during the bye week. That creeping feeling that we were going to take a golden opportunity and just blow it. Which is exactly what they did, in front of a national audience.
Houston didn't catch Young often, who rushed for 73 yards for the evening.
The team got off to their usual slow start on offense, but played decent on defense. I’m not really going to get into a play by play, but it seemed like everytime they had the Titans facing a third and long, Vince Young would scramble for a gain of 8 or 12 yards for the first down. Completely infuriating anti-VY guys, such as myself.
Chris Johnson continued to make the rest of the league his bitch as he piled up another 151 yards on the ground to go along with Vince Young’s 73 yards on the ground. Ridiculous for a team that was leading in rushing defense over the previous 6 games.
Matt Schaub had another dominant game in the air, outplaying Vince Young all the way. But with the game tied up at 17 late in the 4th, Steve Slaton dropped a sure-fire first down pass that instead gave the Titans the ball with just under three minutes to play. Which eventually led to a Rob Bironas 50 yarder with under a minute left in the game.
Matt Schaub didn’t look concerned as he took the team 31 yards in 36 seconds to set up a Kris Brown game tying 49 yarder to send the game to overtime. Then with a dejavu of last week, it wasn’t even close. Ball game.
Chris Johnson, who again dominated the Houston defense, celebrates after Kris Brown misses the would be tying field goal.
Just like that, Huston’s playoff hopes came to an end in my opinion. This game was so winnable that the team figured they only had to show up to win. This hurts way more than winning in Tennessee earlier this year felt good. Not just because of the idiot sports radio callers calling in to show their man love for Vince Young. But because we are clearly the better team and played like a bunch of quitters.
Only so much of this can be put on Gary Kubiak. But he doesn’t play to win. He plays not to lose. 8 seconds left and a timeout in your pocket was plenty of time to run another play and either take a shot at the end zone or even just make the kick easier for Kris Brown. Thats the kind of stuff that is making his seat go from warm to hot. Watch out, Gary. our job is so far from secure that it isn’t even funny. Crappy highlights below.
Tags: Chris Johnson, Gary Kubiak, Kris Brown, Matt Schaub, Rob Bironas, Steve Slaton, Tennessee Titans, Vince Young
