Ya, he's doing some good things, though.... Still shows good arm strength and touch....

It would be nice to see a defensive takeaway pretty soon.

Mariani downs the ensuing kickoff in the endzone. Titans ball at their 20.

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CJ for about 6. 2nd and 4 coming up.

CJ dropped for a loss. 3rd and 7 coming up.

Pass to Hawkins is complete and stretches for the 1st down.

CJ hammered for no gain by Alexander. 2nd and 10 coming up.

Hasselbeck pressured, throws it away. 3rd and 10 coming up.

Dump off to Harper only gets 4. Titans have to punt.

Flag presnap. Against Texans 5 yards. Makes it 4th and 1. Titans still punting.

Punt goes out of bounds at the Texan 13.

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Wow, looks like the Saints are resting their starters - 45-17 over Carolina :rolleyes:

A Brandon Harris sighting - thought they'd sent him back to S. FLA for the winter ? They are playing everybody today.

Tate for about 5. 2nd and 5 coming up.

End around to Jones goes for 4. 3rd and 1 coming up.

Pass to Vickers is dropped. Texans have to punt.

Mariani fair catches the punt at the Titan 43.

Wow that play looked familiar...:(

Yeah...I have been pleasantly surprised by how well he is playing with the 3rd team; going against the Titans' ones.

Wow...did McCain just get burnt by Avery?:D

Pass is broken up by Manning, inc. 2nd and 10 coming up.

Deep pass to Avery goes inc. 3rd and 10 coming up.

Pass over the middle is nearly INT"ed but inc. Titans have to punt.

Punt goes out of bounds at the Texan 5.

Time for Tate to get his 1,000......

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9:16 left in the game.

Dump off to Tate gets 2. 2nd and 8 coming up.

Pass to JJ good for 6. 3rd and 2 coming up.

Dang, Tate is stonewalled for 1. Texans have to punt.

Mariani returns the punt to the Titan 44.

Pass to Avery is broken up, inc. 2nd and 10 coming up.

CJ for 1. 3rd and 9 coming up.

Pass to CJ goes for 8 and half. Measurement gives the Titans a 1st down.

Pass to Avery goes for about 21. Ball at the Texan 25.

Harper for 2. 2nd and 8 coming up. Less than 5 minutes left in the game.

Pass in the endzone is complete to Washington for the TD.

Titans 23, Texans 16

4:31 left in the game.

That is incompetence in the defensive secondary at a level I have never before seen and only imagined. I've been saying all year that our #1 needs to be defensive secondary and I believe that now more than ever.

Texans clearly would like, perhaps even prefer to play the Titans next Sunday based upon the large number of reserves they've played and the minutes they've been on the field.

What I am taking away from this is that our 2s and 3s are able to hang with another team's 1s - when they have the playoffs on the line and we don't. Even if we lose, I'm rather impressed.

And, before I forget, Thanks to Arky for another season of play-by-play. Great job.

Bironas's kickoff goes out of the endzone. Texans ball at their 20.

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Deep pass to BJ is complete but flags down. Illegal contact Titans is declined. Ball at the Titan 40.

Tate is TFL'ed for -1. 2nd and 11 coming up.

Delhomme is swarmed and sacked. 3rd and 20 coming up.

Pass to Ward is batted away, inc. Texans to punt with 3:05 left in the game.

Mariani fair catches at the Titan 14.

The Texans right now aren't good enough to 'choose' any opponent. It would've been nice to go into the post season with some momentum - let alone putting the Titans out of their misery. But no, these guys have to set themselves up for epic fail.

CJ for 2. 2nd and 8 coming up. Timeout Texans with 2:49 left.

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CJ gets about 3. Timeout Texans (#2) with 2:45 left.

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On 3rd and 5, Harper gets about 10 and the 1st down. Texans use their last timeout.

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Harper for 1. 2nd and 9 coming up.

2 minute warning.

The Texans were obviously perfectly content to lose this game which stands to reason. This is historically a loser organization and today showed nothing different.

Hall sweeps left and fumbles! Nading recovers! Texans ball! Hall still down on the play..... Injury timeout with 1:49 to go. Ball at the Titan 36.

Come on Texans. Tie it up and then send these a-holes home with an L.

Pass to JJ good for 20.

Dump to Tate goes to the 11 yard line. 2nd and 7 coming up.

Pass to Dreesen goes for no gain. Less than a minute left in the game. 3rd and 3.

Pass to Casey at the 5 yard line.

Spike with 24 seconds left.

Delhomme throws it away. 19 seconds left. 3rd and goal.

TD! Pass to BJ is complete! Texans to go for 2..... 14 seconds left.

Dreessen offsides. -5 yards, puts the ball back at the 7 or 8.

Bad snap! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Gameover.

Texans have to kickoff....

WTF?! Seriously?

At least get a f#cking center in there who can snap the ball you stupid rodent.

Titans recover the onside kick.

Titans kneel it out.

Final score:

Titans 23, Texans 22

On to the playoffs....

Thomas Austin just earned a spot in Houston sports folklore.... ;)

No chance Kubiak goes for two in that situation with anything to play for. All he could see was another possible 15 minutes of risking his players to injury, so he decided to end it right away. No doubt he wasn't counting on a false start followed by a bad snap (Marciano...can we have a word with you?) but the Texans accomplished everything they needed to do, other than win the game which wasn't a big priority this week.

Sure they did, if you count taking a three game losing streak against vastly inferior teams into the playoffs as an accomplishment.

So, do we have a QB controversy or is it TJ for sure next week.

TJ for sure. Unless he breaks his arm trying to open up a McDonalds bag or something

Looks like it will be Cinci.

Word was that Yates had separated AC joint in his left (non-throwing) shoulder. Still expected to play next weekend.

Ugly game for us. Good effort from a number of backups, but KJ looks bad even next to the scrubs. And Brandon Harris showed me on that TD why he hasn't played.

But at least we don't have a slug like chris Johnson. Worst effort guy in the NFL. Did you see his "block" on braman's sack. Pathetic.

That may be but I can't count the number of times I thought we had him for a loss only to see him squirm away somehow and end up gaining six yards. Arian is pretty damn elusive but that is just crazy.

Big picture, Chuck. They rested Foster. They got AJ some snaps. They got Delhomme some live action. They got the scrubs some needed action.

If they'd *wanted* to win the game, they would have kicked the extra point and gone to overtime. That's all you need to know.

The three-game losing streak is quickly forgotten if we win this coming weekend and Kubiak was coaching so as to give us the best chance of winning that game, not this one.

Yep, everyone is 0-0 when the playoffs start....

I understand what you're saying but I feel like I AM looking at the big picture. Today's loss is annoying but far less troubling to me than the previous two. And far less troubling than the way the team has played on both sides of the ball, starters and scrubs, over the last three games. I understand wanting to keep all your key guys healthy but I would be more comfortable if they had come out and played like a real team for more than that one initial drive. I don't see a squad that is mature or experienced enough with success to be able to start 0-0. Think about it. Do you really believe these guys can put their recent failures out of their minds and approach the Bengals as if it were really 0-0? I don't. As usual I would love to be wrong.

If the Texans come out and smoke Cincy next week I will welcome all manner of ridicule and abuse.

The only troubling loss is the one to the Colts. I mean, yuck. What was that?

Yates' TD drive today though was encouraging. Having Andre Johnson back made an immediate impact in the success of the running game. So long as Kubiak/Yates doesn't turtle on the offensive playcalling next weekend, I thought what we saw early on in this one was good, at least good enough to take on the Bengals, who also feature a rookie QB (one that will be playing a road playoff game in a noisy stadium, no less).

Ya, the Carolina game was "the letdown game" - a forgivable loss, IMO... The Colts game was just an out and out stinker, bad loss. Today's game was "meaningless"... at least, that's how the coaching staff approached it. A win or loss would neither hurt nor advance the cause.... Somewhat of a sneaky play by Kubes to not tip his hand until the game started, but if the ploy works, the upshot is that you will probably have more fellows rested and ready to go than in recent weeks. At least as ready to go as you can be with a 3rd (or 4th) string QB at the helm.....

If our first-round game was against the Steelers or the Patriots, I'd agree with you. Those are two teams that know how to win and the Texans don't.

But the opponent is Cincy and their recent playoff history is only slightly better than ours. They have a rookie QB and we have a rookie QB. They're coming off a loss where they did play hard and we're coming off a loss where (by design) we weren't.

I think defense and running game will be the keys and both of those favor the Texans. If we don't turn the ball over or get stung with costly penalties, I think we emerge winners, particularly with a rested Foster and a recovered AJ. Plus, we just gave them two new weapons to worry about - Ward and Casey.

There are 50 ways we could still lose but that's the playoffs. At some point, you have to trust the talent and I think ours is better.

Well, they actually have a playoff history (and a recent one, at that) while we don't. Unless you count never having been to the playoffs as historic. Which it was.

Anyway, as I said a couple of weeks ago and still believe, if the Texans play a compete game I sincerely think they can beat any team in the AFC. That means no turnovers, the defense generating some turnovers and ideally some points, running the ball well, and Kubiak's not coaching the game like a mouthbreather. A tall order, I know.

Obviously you could blithely say the same thing about any team still in it. If Cincy does all these things they can beat the Pats. Of course. But the Texans have proven that they have the solid running game and the solid defense (until December, anyway) to execute this vision.

I just wish the regular season had ended more encouragingly.

And by the way, if you think that Kubiak is going to decide that today's contest indicates that Ward and Casey deserve more looks in a real game then you are nuttier than I'd credited. James Casey in particular has been criminally under-utilized this year. That was never clearer than when Vickers dropped a key first down pass today. Why Vickers at FB rather than Casey in that situation? Who the hell knows.

That and today's performance in general point to what has long annoyed me - this is a very talented, very deep team that is very poorly led.