DGDB&D: a Texans blog.

I woke up Sunday mornin’ with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt

Dec 24, 2007 2007 Season, Broken Record, Colts Shmolts, Curious Coaching, DeMeco Ryans, Dunta Robinson, God hates ugly, Kris Brown's golden leg, Matt Turk rules, Posts that list too many players, Rosie Rosenfels, Super Mario, The Fred, Travis Johnson, Von

In the spirit of the holiday season, let us start with the good things from yesterday’s game. This will be a short list.

• Mario Williams. Super Mario continued to show that he should not only be on the Pro Bowl roster, but should be a starter, putting up a sack in his sixth straight game and keeping pace as the AFC leader. It’s a bit premature, but I am going to come out and say it now–next year, anything less than 18 sacks will disappoint me. (He did get fooled on the Dallas Clark end around, but, Christ, who didn’t?)
• Earl Cochran. I have no idea how he does it, but Earl gets to the ball more or less unblocked more often than not. Hell, he made a tackle on the RB eight yards downfield at one point. He’s fast, aggressive, and has fluid hips that allow him to turn in space. If we don’t keep him around, it’s a mistake.
• Fred Bennett. I love The Fred. The back-to-back passes to Wayne (second one for a TD) notwithstanding, Fred played his ass off all day. 11 tackles, a forced fumble, two great breaks on balls to break up passes…the fact that he languished on the bench while Petey was out there stinking up the joint is still irritating. The good news, though, is that a Bennett/Dunta Robinson combo would mean we finally had two real CBs.
• DeMeco Ryans. Injured knee nothing. It pretty much doesn’t matter which direction the play goes or where Ryans is lined up pre-snap–if the ball leaves the QBs hand, there is roughly a 74.4% chance that DeMeco will be in on the play that brings the ball carrier down. Amazing. The announcers–who, by the way, sucked–mentioned that over the last two seasons, Ryans has more tackles than ANYONE in football. He’s good like that.
• Andre Johnson. Same as it ever was, AJ is just a monster. He’d have been even better Sunday had Sage not eyeball humped him as he ran his routes (more on that later).
• Andre Davis. The man is a special teams ninja.
• Matt Turk. Never a good sign when his 4 punts for a 44.5 yard average are a highlight.

Now for the bad. These are the little lumps of coal in the stocking of my life.

• The secondary other than Fred Bennett. Will Demps seems to knock the crap out of people on every hit, yet, strangely, he doesn’t really knock people flat on their asses most of the time. I can’t figure it out. Case in point, Kenton Keith took Demps’ hit head on, paused briefly, and then moved forward for additional yards. I like Will and I’m glad he’s been so good for us, but this could be a problem. Even more of a problem is the fact that C.C. Brown only hits people with any sort of authority when they are extended or not looking. When the opposing player could see him coming, Brown was as harmless as a fart on a windy day Sunday. Even more irritating, though, was the way he played his position (or, more accurately, didn’t play his position). He was nowhere to be seen on Joe Addai’s TD run (Charlie Anderson also whiffed on this one, but Brown was noticeably absent behind him), he got juked out of his shorts by Clark in the open field, he nearly airballed when he went to shove Clark out of bounds later, he was late to pick up Wayne in the two-deep coverage after Bennett released him, and he vacated his position on Clark’s second TD catch. But Brown was an All-Pro compared to Von Hutchins, who was used and abused by Wayne until Kubiak adjusted and put Bennett on Reggie. He was absolutely roasted on the 42-yard bomb to Wayne near the end of the first quarter (Why was Demps up at linebacker depth before the snap on that play if he wasn’t blitzing and where was Brown? Or did someone think it was a good idea to see if Hutchins could run with Wayne?). AND Hutchins was so late closing on WRs that caught the ball in front of him that they were twice tackled by a linebacker who had to first turn and then chase them down. Oh, and then there was Jamar Fletcher…
• Sage Rosenfels. I sincerely hope that this game will hush the “Sage is Baby Jesus” talk. Even if you don’t want to say he failed as a starter, the fact is that he has never impressed someone to the point that he was “the guy” other than when he was replacing an injured starter. Sunday, he showed us why. There were at least five balls thrown behind receivers, two of which were picked. He stared down his receivers from the snap and threw directly where he was looking almost every time. He forced throws to Andre Johnson when Walter and/or Daniels were wide open. This guy is a solid backup, but if someone wants to give us value for him, holding on to him is borderline retarded, because he is never going to be anything more than a solid backup.
• Darius Walker. I almost put him in the “good” list because he did look strong early and he ran the ball between the tackles well in the beginning stages of the second half. I put him here, however, because it became incredibly apparent that he is nowhere near fast enough to get the ball to the outside and create something out of nothing. The Colts adjusted to his early runs by keeping the LBs home and letting Walker decide whether to run into them or to take it outside where he was hauled down with minimal effort. Of course, seeing this, Kubiak decided it would be a good idea to pitch the ball to him eight yards behind the line and see what he could do (the answer: nothing). I like the idea of him as a third-down back, but that’s about it.
• Travis Johnson. This gets its own post.
• Kris Brown. You miss your only FG, you go on this list by default. Not a horrible game by the Husker, but he didn’t seem upset at all that he pushed that 49-yarder wide.
• Vonta Leach. Question: What good is a fullback who misses on his lead blocking assignments? Answer: No good at all, regardless of whether the coach and QB try to force passes to him. Leach played like butt. Now, part of this might have been due to Walker’s lack of speed; blocking for someone slower than you are probably takes a different approach. Still…man…never a good day when the FB stands out.

Other notes from the contest:

• Regardless of what the now-banned-commenter “Tom,” thinks, the problem Sunday was not the blitz getting burned. Only one of the TDs came against a blitz, and that was a weird phenomenon where we sent too many blitzers and the lanes got clogged up before we could get there. Otherwise, the problem was the Manning was picking apart our zone and then Reggie Wayne would abuse whomever was on him in man coverage. And that we couldn’t get to Manning whether we sent 4, 5, or 6 rushers. And that we couldn’t move the ball because Sage imploded after the second possession. AND because 3/4 of our secondary was playing like crap.
• Kubiak’s playcalling left a lot to be desired. Outside runs with Walker, sending Kevin Walter on a 6 yard route when you need 8, not going for it on fourth when we should have, using Andre Johnson on a hitch screen from our own 25, etc. Uninspiring at best.
• Owen Daniels continues to run hot and cold. He’ll make some great catches over the middle and get you all excited, only to irritate you when he alligator arms one in the face of a linebacker or fails to catch easy balls.
• Tony Dungy may be the nicest guy in the NFL or in the whole world. He might be a great father, husband, coach, and author. But he looks like a whiny ninny when he stands there and yells “no, no, no!” at the refs after they called one of the most obvious horse-collar tackles you’ll ever see.
• So much for the nine wins. At least we have one more crack at .500. I never thought I’d be so happy to be playing a team with absolutely nothing to play for. (Though you could argue that the Colts didn’t have much to play for, either…)