Bills 24 Texans 21

Key note to first year Texans’ coach Gary Kubiak — the Texans (3-7) are not yet good enough to put the offense in a phone booth while trying to milk the clock with a narrow 4th quarter lead. It’s pretty hard for the Texans to lose a game in which their generally anemic offense generates almost 400 yards, but giving up over 200 yards passing and two long TD passes to the eminently forgettable Bills QB J.P. Losman in the 1st quarter is a good way to start to do it. And then making only four first downs in the second half (the Bills had as many in the game-winning drive) and just one in the fourth quarter is the way to finish it off. By the way, does anyone else think that John McClain’s entry into the world of blogging has actually improved his analysis of Texans football (blog post on yesterday’s game is here)? The Texans go on the road the next two weeks to meet the Jets (5-5) and the Raiders (2-8) before returning home the following week to meet the Titans (3-7).

Houston Cougars 23 Memphis 20 OT

In another example of what can go wrong when a team quits taking measured risks with its offense while sitting on a 4th quarter lead, the Coogs (9-3, 7-2) survived a blocked field goal returned for a Memphis (1-10, 0-7) TD in the last two minutes to win the game in overtime. Houston has an extremely difficult offense to defend when they are clicking on all cylinders, but their defense is simply not good enough for the offense to play conservatively after building a lead. The Cougars now get Thanksgiving week off before hosting the C-USA championship game on Friday evening, December 1 against probably Southern Miss (6-4, 5-2).

Rice 18 East Carolina 17

The Owls (6-5, 5-2) continue to make me look prescient for my early season prediction that they were going to surprise quite a few people this season so long as they could avoid decimating injuries during their brutal early season schedule. This win was particularly impressive in that the Owls pulled it off after losing stellar QB Chase Clement over the final quarter and a half. If the Owls can get Clement back next week and beat SMU (6-5, 4-3) at home, then they will likely be C-USA’s representative in the Ft. Worth Bowl, the Owls first bowl appearance in 45 years. First year Rice coach Todd Graham is the coach of the year in my book.

The Texas Longhorns and the Texas Aggies were off this week in preparation for their annual day-after-Thanksgiving showdown in Austin.

Former University of Michigan >Bo Schembechler — one of the true characters in the storied history of Big Ten football — died yesterday, adding another emotional element to today’s big game between No. 2 Michigan and No. 1 Ohio State. Here is the Detroit Free Press coverage on Schembechler’s life and death, including Schembechler biographer Mitch Albom’s heartfelt tribute.
I never had the opportunity to meet Coach Schembechler, but I have long felt connected to him. Many of my friends in the coaching profession knew and enjoyed him, particularly how he loved to compete. Even though my family was from Iowa, we always suffered with Schembechler during Michigan’s long drought in the Rose Bowl when it seemed as if the Pac-10 teams were always flying by Bo’s Michigan teams. Although Schembechler was 12 years younger than my father, the two of them were both active and highly-motivated men who had heart attacks and by-pass surgery at a time when that surgery was still a somewhat iffy proposition. They both then returned to their respective professions and worked productively for many years, representing two good examples of the value of that surgical procedure. Schembechler even died in the same manner as my father, suddenly of a heart attack while enjoying what he loved to do. These were two men who were not about to let a little health problem interfere with enjoying the fullness of life.

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As noted in this earlier post, Las Vegas Sports Consultants publishes their OddsMakers Top 25 each week in which they rank major college football teams based on injuries, performance, skill and game location, not on won-loss record and not on which teams will draw the greatest or least betting action (they leave that for the bookies). The poll is becoming quite popular with the betting markets and is currently published every Monday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Inasmuch as this ranking is based on the profit motive (LVSC is attempting to attract betting customers through the accuracy of its research), my sense is that the OddsMakers Top 25 ends up being a more accurate ranking than the traditional polls, which tend to be plagued by the subjective bias of its voters. For your weekend football viewing pleasure, The following is this week’s Oddsmakers Top 25 poll with the team record and BCS ranking in parentheses:

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H’mm, now let me get this one straight.
As Stephanie Stradley reports in detail (John McClain’s comments are here), Texans offensive guard Fred Weary left work at Reliant Park a little after noon on Tuesday. Weary, who is 6’4″, 308 lbs., was followed by a couple of Houston policemen in a squad car as he drove through the Reliant Park area to get on the South Loop and head home.
The officers followed Weary for about six miles and determined that he was “acting suspiciously” and “looking at (them) on several occasions.” After seeing him commit the heinous offense of making a bad lane change, the crack team of officers swooped into action and pulled Weary over on the shoulder of the West Loop, which just happens to be the busiest freeway in Houston. After stopping Weary, the officers ramped up their investigation and determined that the front license plate on Weary’s car was missing.
Weary was understandably irritated that the officiers had pulled him over in one of the most dangerous locations in Houston for doing something that occurs probably a million times in Houston each day. One thing led to another and, before you know it, the officers had Tasered Weary, arrested him and hauled him down to city jail. Verifying once again that it is virtually impossible to get someone processed out of jail in Houston in less than seven hours regardless of the offense, Weary was finally bailed out and able to head home at around 9:30 p.m. Quite a day off, eh?
As usual, HPD is contending that the officers acted reasonably in Tasering and arresting Weary. Count me as highly skeptical about that.
Update: The criminal case against Weary was dismissed in short order. Stay tuned.

Geez, and I thought Texas Aggie fans were taking their team’s losses hard. But Aggie angst is nothing compared to what boiled over in Longhorn land after Texas’ upset loss to Kansas State last Saturday night that doomed the Horns’ BCS championship hopes:

An unhinged Texas Longhorn fan who blames Doug Flutieís televised analysis for the teamís upset Saturday threatened the former football star and his family in an electronic mail message, police said.
The threat, which was not detailed by police, was sent to the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism early Sunday, police Lt. Paul Shastany said.
ìWe have intentions of finding this person and speaking to this person,î said Shastany. ìAs threats go, itís a pretty serious incident.î

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Texans 13 Jaguars 10

If I didn’t know better, I’d think that the Texans (3-6) have the Jaguars’ (5-4) number.

In a game that stands for the proposition that you don’t have to play great offensively to win when the other team’s QB plays poorly, the Texans took advantage of four Jaguar QB David Garrard interceptions and a stout defensive effort to win their third game of the season, two of which have been over the Jags. The win was the Texans’ first road in almost two years and ended an NFL-leading 12 game losing streak in road games, The Texans mostly stunk offensively (306 yds total offense) , but they were at least well-balanced (148 yds rushing/158 yds passing) and most importantly, protected the football. Texans QB David Carr was knocked out with a sprained shoulder in the 4th quarter, but it did not look like a serious injury. The Texans now actually have a chance of stringing some wins together as their next four games are at home against the Bills (3-6), at the Jets (5-4) and Raiders (2-7), and at home against the Titans (2-7).

By the way, Chronicle sportswriter Richard Justice — who is presumably paid to notice such things — is just noticing that Texans kicker Kris Brown is not very good:

“K Kris Brown is becoming something of a concern. His miss of a 32-yard field goal late in the first half was his third miss in four games. He missed a more difficult kick, a 52-yarder, later in the game.”

Uh, Earth to Richard, Earth to Richard — Brown has been a concern for the past several seasons!

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As noted in earlier posts here and here, Aaron Schatz is the lead author of Pro Football Prospectus 2006, which is an innovative effort to develop the same type of objective statistical framework for evaluating professional football players that Bill James and other sabermetricians have developed and refined for evaluation of Major League Baseball players.
In this provocative NY Sunday Times op-ed, Schatz suggests that NFL teams are using the wrong criteria when they pay a large amount to acquire or retain a field goal kicker who has made almost of all of his field goal attempts in the previous season. Schatz’s argument is that a field goal kicker may have a “hot” season from time-to-time, but will almost always regress in the following season to his career success rate for field goals. On the other hand, Schatz notes that another key kicking statistic — average kickoff distance — shows far more consistency from season-to-season than field goal percentage. Kickoff distance is important because longer kickoffs generally give the team kicking off a better chance of pinning their opposition deep in their own territory, which reduces the risk of giving up touchdowns and field goals. A case in point is the Cardinals’ Neil Rackers:

No kicker reflects the difference between field goals and kickoffs better than Neil Rackers of the Arizona Cardinals. Last season, Rackers set an N.F.L. record with 40 field goals, and led the league by converting 95 percent of his attempts. But in 2004, he connected on 76 percent of his attempts. This year, Rackers is even worse, making just 67 percent of his tries. His high-profile misses include a 40-yard attempt that probably would have completed an upset and handed the Chicago Bears their first loss of the season.
Nonetheless, while his field-goal percentages have swung up and down over the past three seasons, Rackers has consistently ranked as one of the leagueís premier kickoff men. He led the N.F.L. in average kickoff distance in 2004 and 2005, and is fifth in the league this year.
This disparity in consistency between field goals and kickoffs means that N.F.L. teams are generally signing and drafting kickers based on the wrong skills.