Although not as bad a public relations blunder as last year’s decision to roast their fans during their first home game, the Texans were not particularly hospitable to the high school band that performed at this past Sunday’s opening game of the 2006 season. In addition to being subjected to NFL-mandated pat downs before entering the stadium, Houston-based public relations expert John Wagner reports that the band members were not even allowed to watch one play of the game!
Of course, based on the way the game went after the Texans’ first drive, the kids didn’t miss much as a result of the Texans’ lack of hospitality.

Ohio State 24 Texas Longhorns 7

Ohio State came into Austin on Saturday night and won the season’s first big game by playing as exceptionally as Texas did last year in Columbus. The Horns did not play badly and would have been threatening to take the lead deep in Ohio State territory midway through the 4th quarter had Michael Pittman not fumbled away a Longhorn TD in the first half. Although the Horns ran the ball reasonably well against an always rugged Buckeye defense, none of the Horns’ receivers were able to break a big play, which is going to be an important element for the Longhorns to win big games in the post-Vince era. And what on earth is UT doing allowing Matthew McConaughey to act like an idiot on national TV while on the Longhorns sideline? The Horns have a nice scrimmage against Rice this weekend in Houston at Reliant Stadium before beginning the Big 12 schedule the following weekend in Austin against Iowa State.

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Has it really been only a year since the pre-season review of the Texans’ 2005 season? Look at all that has transpired over the past year:

The Texans had a disastrous start to what was considered a promising 2005 season, which included a first home game roasting of some understandably upset season-ticket holders;
A previously-fawning media bailed out quickly as the Texans ship was sinking, even though some reporters remained quite confused over the Texans seemingly inexplicable decline;
Former Texans general manager Charlie Casserly was initially in disbelief over the season, but then became increasingly defensive over criticism of his personnel management, which — at least in regard to drafting players — turned out not to be as bad as most folks assumed, although it became apparent that selecting QB David Carr with the first pick of the 2002 NFL draft was a mistake;
As the Texans’ fortunes faded, hope sprang anew that the team would be revived by a once-in-a-decade-type running back, only to have those hopes dashed by intrigue and then the selection of what may end up being a more prudent choice in the long run, even though John McClain contended that it is impossible (except for him) to evaluate NFL drafts accurately in the short term;
Coach Dom Capers graciously accepted being cut loose at the end of the horrifying season, but then worked his new job to scam Texans owner Bob McNair for more salary. Meanwhile, despite strong denials from Casserly and McClain that Casserly was being shown the door, Casserly was fired after the NFL draft even while denying that he was being fired, and then confirmed that he was indeed fired a couple of months later;
After three seemingly successful seasons and a fourth disastrous season in the team’s first four years, Texans owner Bob McNair changed the management model for the Texans going into the team’s fifth season;
Increasingly sophisticated statistical analysis of professional football generated some underappreciated factors for determining the outcome of NFL games; and
Although more circumspect about the Texans’ prospects in comparison with the pre-season last year, the local media’s pre-season coverage of the team and its players frequently continues to lack any objective analysis.

Whew! So where does that leave the Texans coming into the 2006 season? Well, certainly not in great shape but, somewhat surprisingly, in better shape than would normally be the case of team coming off a 2-14 season. Indeed, a reasonable case can be made that the Texas are finally moving in the right direction.

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As noted earlier here and here earlier, even his hyprocrisy in turning on the Texans during their disastrous 2005 season after predicting in the pre-season that the team was a playoff contender does not deter Chronicle NFL sportswriter John McClain from engaging in more cheerleading for the Texans with this puff-piece regarding the team’s recent acquisition of journeyman running back, Ron Dayne (for a positive, but more realistic, view of Dayne, see John Lopez’s column here). The article even includes a chart noting that Dayne is the fifth Heisman Trophy winning running back to have played for a Houston professional football team, the others being former Oilers Billy Cannon, Earl Campbell, Mike Rozier and Eddie George.
Not mentioned in McClain’s article is that Dayne is overweight and slow, and is unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the Texans’ performance this season. Football Prospectus, which uses objective criteria to rank Dayne as a below-NFL average running back for his career, observes that “Dayne’s problem has always been finding the hole to run through. You literally have to stick the hole in front of him, slap him across the face, point, and yell ‘HOLE!'”
Now, this all may work out just fine for the Texans, but don’t you think that such a counter-analysis of Dayne might creep into at least a part of an article by the Chronicle’s lead NFL writer? Stay tuned for my pre-season evaluation of the Texans coming this Friday.

The Labor Day weekend marks the beginning of the football season and HCT’s weekly local football reviews, so here’s the first weekly review of the 2006 season:
Houston 31 Rice 30

The only real game of the weekend occurred at Rice Stadium on Saturday night as the Cougars pulled one out that they should not have won against the feisty Owls playing their first game under new head coach Todd Graham. The Coogs looked to be preparing for a blowout by taking a 14-0 lead in the first quarter, but then the Ows scored 30 straight points behind clever QB Chase Clement over the next quarter and a half to take a 16 point lead, only to have UH score the final 17 points of the game to nab the victory.
Despite the win, Cougar supporters were not thrilled. The Cougars under head coach Art Briles frequently engage in an untraditional, discombobulated sort of game that leaves UH supporters scratching their heads. Briles runs an unconventional offense — sort of a combination of the Wing-T, Single Wing, Run ‘N Shoot, and Spread offenses, if you can imagine that — which, when it is clicking, is very difficult to defense. Unfortunately, the offense is also based largely on timing and, when a defense figures out how to disrupt that timing, the UH offense struggles. And when Houston’s offense stuggles, it tends to affect the other components of the UH football team.

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As noted in this earlier post, Texans owner Bob McNair allowed former Texans General Manager Charlie Casserly to resign under the pretense that he would be pursuing a job with the National Football League’s main office, which Casserly subsequently failed to land. Some Houston media reporters — such as the Chronicle’s John McClain — actually swallowed the “Casserly resigned” charade.
Thus, my eyebrow raised a bit when I read the following blurb from John Czarnecki’s blog over at FoxSports:

How is that?
You would be amazed how many NFL general managers know Matt Millenís won-loss record in Detroit since he became the teamís general manager.
ìHow in the hell does someone with a 21-59 record get named to the Competition Committee?î one GM asked me. ìHow does he keep his job and also get a new contract?î
Said a former member of the committee: ìMatt is the wrong kind of person to be on that committee. I just canít figure out what they are doing, but Iím glad Iím not dealing with it anymore.î
Millen replaced former Houston GM Charley Casserly, who is now working for CBS Sports. By the way, Casserly wasnít happy with his settlement pay from Texans owner Bob McNair after being fired.

Gosh, I wonder who that “former member of the committee” is (hint – Casserly was formerly a member of the Competition Committee while he was Texans GM)? And then, after dumping on Millen, Casserly goes off on the eminently classy McNair for supposedly being cheap in buying out Casserly’s contract.
But John McClain says Casserly resigned. Yeah, right.

Although the big news on the University of Texas campus yesterday was that freshman cowboy Colt McCoy will be replacing Vince Young as the Longhorn starting quarterback in the Longhorn’s first game this Saturday against sacrificial lamb North Texas, the bigger news is the new Jumbotron video screen that has been installed at Royal-Memorial Stadium. Check out the the specs on this thing:

The screen is 55 feet tall by 134 feet wide;

The university had to upgrade its utilities capacity to accommodate its power needs;

Forty 5-ton air conditioning units are required to cool it;

The heads of the gounding bolts are 5 inches wide; and

At least for a few months, it will be the world’s largest HDTV in existence.

The Yankees have the house that Ruth built. The Longhorns have the video screen that Vince built.

Given the largely meaningless nature of NFL pre-season football, I’m holding off on posting my annual pre-season blog post on the Texans until the first regular season game is close at hand. But given the Chronicle’s blanket coverage of the Texans’ training camp, it’s a bit hard to overlook the cheerleading doozies that the Chronicle writers generate almost daily about their hometown heroes.
With the exception of a couple of comments such as this one last week, Chronicle NFL columnist John McClain has generally been more careful this pre-season than he was last pre-season when he was predicting that the Texans were primed to make a playoff run. However, McClain simply cannot contain his cheerleading for the Texans at times, such as the following comment about Texans guard Chester Pitts, who is competing for a job in the area of one of the Texans’ traditionally weakest areas, the offensive line:

“It seems strange that Pitts is having to compete for a starting job, considering he’s never missed a play in four seasons while moving between left tackle and left guard.”

Pitts has been a member of the Texans offensive line that has been the worst pass-blocking line in the NFL for the past four seasons. Last season, Football Prospectus attributed 40 of the quarterback sacks that QB David Carr endured directly to blown blocks of the offensive line, which was the highest number in the NFL among offensive lines. Pitts had six of those blown blocks for sacks, which was the second-most on the line (Todd Wade, who is no longer with the team, was the leader with eight). Pitts has also been one of the most-penalized offensive linemen in the NFL during his four years in the league.
Thus, from my vantage point, it does not seem strange at all that Pitts is competing for a starting job. In fact, it reflects progress that he is.

Aaron Schatz is the lead author of Pro Football Prospectus 2006 (prior post here), 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 made standard in evaluating Major League Baseball players. I have read much of the first two Football Prospectus editions that have been published, and I recommend that you pick up this season’s edition if you are interested in the NFL and the evaluation of football players.
In this interesting NY Times article, Schatz takes on an issue in regard to NFL games that the NFL hierarchy does not enjoy talking about — that is, the wide discrepancy in the number of penalties called in NFL games between the various referee crews that call such games.
As Schatz notes, one of the Super Bowl participants could well have been determined by that factor last season as the Seattle Seahawks barely survived their November game against the New York Giants even though the officiating crew called an astounding 19 penalties against the Giants (the average NFL team was penalized 8.5 times a game last year). Not surprisingly, the crew that officiated that game called more penalties than any other NFL referee crew last season. Schatz goes on to observe that certain crews tend to call substantially more of certain types of penalties — such as false starts and pass interference — than other crews.
The NFL promotes the image that its games are decided on the field by the players and their coaches. But Schatz’s research is indicating that who referees a particular game may be as big a factor as the participants.