DGDB&D: a Texans blog.

sigh

Nov 17, 2008 2008 Season, Curious Coaching, Ensagenation, Faggination, Fuck Jared Allen, Gary Kubiak might be high, Rosencopter, Rosie Rosenfels

The English language is severely limited, at least when it comes to adjectives to desribe a situation or mood.  For example, last year, we noted that there wasn’t really a word to describe a situation where you are pissed with how long something took, but incredibly pleased with the end result, so we coined one: fagginated.

Well, along those same lines, I can’t really think of a word that describes how you feel after something bad happens when you knew all along it was going to happen.  I mean, “deflated” doesn’t really get there, because your hopes were never really up if you were being realistic.  “Pissed” doesn’t cover it because it’s hard to get too angry about something you saw coming; that’d be like getting angry that Saw VI was being released.  So I am going to go with “ensaged.”  For example, you totally screw up a million dollar project at work and subsequently get fired, your firing could leave you ensaged–you saw it coming, but it still pretty much sucks.

In that vein, I was totally ensaged with the ending of yesterday’s game.  When we got the ball back with roughly two minutes, bigwood25, who was watching the game at my house, commented that we still had plenty of time and would probably win this to get even for the previous loss to Indy.  Already resigned to my fate, I remarked, simply, “no, Sage will definitely find a way to mess this up.  I have no doubt.”

Interception, ballgame.  Ensagination ensues.

What does it even mean when you reach this point with your team, when you are absolutely positive that they will find a way not to win a game that most teams (other than the Rams and Chiefs) would have had better-than-average odds to win?  Two minutes left with a top five offense–we should have had at least 50-50 odds to get there and get it done.  But I bet you would be hard-pressed to find a Texans fan who had even the slightest hope that we would actually pull it out.  Because we never, ever, EVER do.

So, yeah.  I was ensaged.  Damn it.  But I went from ensaged to full-on irritated when I read the following postgame quotes:

Kubiak: (on the interception at the end of the game) “The thing that you are trying to do right there is just get yourself in position to throw a Hail Mary toward the end zone. That’s all you are trying to do.”

No.  NO.  That is NOT “all you are trying to do.”  You had the ball in their territory with about a minute to play.  You had an offense that had moved the ball well all day.  They had yet to consistently stop your passing game OR your running game.  Wht you are trying to do there is march down the field, get out of bounds around the 15- or 20-yard line with 25 seconds to play, and take two to three shots at the endzone on real pass patterns.  Saying you were trying to get in Hail Mary position in that situation is either revisionist history or, more likely, a sign that you had ZERO faith in your QB to actually manufacture a crunch-time drive.  Neither answer really pleases me, but the latter is especially irritating since you continue to insist that the team doesn’t miss a beat when we switch from Matt to Sage.  Would Schaub have made that drive?  I honestly don’t know.  But I do know I would have felt roughly 13183736 times more confident in our chances.  Then again, if you are just telling the team to get into chuck-and-pray position, maybe ANY confidence on my part would have been severely misguided.

Sage: (on the interception in the final drive) “We had four verticals on and they rolled a cover that sort of surprised me and I thought I had a chance with Kevin (Walter) on the sideline. I saw Owen Daniels flash. I think Owen Daniels was open enough, but I just made a bad threw [sic]. I threw it behind him and probably should have just checked the ball down or something else. I really just made a bad throw. You know, we had a chance. To come into this place, it’s a hard place to win and we had a chance. They made the plays today and we didn’t.”

First..wait…”sort of surprised” you?  Really?  A six-man zone when they are trying to keep everything in front of them and not give you the sidelines “surprised” you?  Are you also surprised when the sun comes up?  That coverage was not the least bit surprising; they’d used something similar for most of the drive.  Just because the corner stuck with Owen a little longer than he had before should not be surprising, especially for an NFL QB.

Second, “probably?”  So you’re saying there’s a chance you should have still gone ahead and made that same throw?  Even knowing what you know now?  Good god.

Finally, not “we.”  You.  Well, you and the defense, but for purposes of this conversation, YOU failed to make the play.  You threw an awful ball that everyone watching knew you would throw.  That not on anyone but the guy tossing the pigskin.\

In the end, though, whether ensagenated or irritated, the end result is the same—another loss, another lost season, and another week of cursing the names of Sage Rosenfels and Jared Allen.  Great.  Because I don’t already have enough of that in my life, right?