Like many of you, I do not want to rehash whatever the hell that was we saw on Thursday night. I'd just as soon not think about the incompetent referees, the zombie-like offense, or the utter lunacy of allowing Kareem Jackson onto the field at ANY point during which there is time still on the clock. (Aside: I found great comfort by singing the classic Tex-mas song "We Wish You'd Cut Kareem Jackson (and We Mean By Next Week)" during the drive to my wife's family's house. My wife, however, did not find this nearly as comforting)

Instead, I'm going to my happy place. A place where losing to Dan Orlovsky and the Colts can be molded and shaped and framed into a lovely centerpiece of denial and delusion.

Observe:

It WAS the game before Christmas, and the Colts have had such a horrific year prior to the game. And Gary Kubiak seems like a decent enough guy. I'm willing to bet you that, because we're already going to the playoffs and out of an deep sense of sympathy for the Colts' plight, Kubiak didn't exactly give a supreme effort on the gridiron Thursday and instead decided to give the Colts the gift that keeps on giving--a win and a muddied chance to get the first overall pick in next year's draft.

Yeah, yeah, that's it. He wanted to give them an early Christmas present! And the Texans, such men of high character, they went along with Kooky Kubiak's nutty scheme and played they way they did. They did because they HAD to in order to assure a Colts win.

Well played, Coach Kubiak, well played indeed.

See? Rationalization can make even the worst thing sound nice!

Oh, well. At least we get Wade and Andre back to face Southern Kentucky.

Also, since none of us want to relive the Thursday night debacle, this will be a very short and decidedly unsweet red zone review.

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I am an anime nerd. I admit it. Before I got a real job, I would spend my days watching Adult Swim's anime lineup on my DVR--when I wasn't on here, at least. One of my favorites is a show called "Fullmetal Alchemist." In that show, people can turn air into fire, scrap metal into full suits of armor, and could, if applied to football, turn Frank Bush into Wade Phillips. But there's a rule that they must follow called "Equivalent Exchange." In order to gain, something of equal value must be surrendered.

I believe in balance. I think, however irrational it may be (and trust me, I know it is), that for every game the Texans win that they aren't "supposed to," they must lose an equally stunning game that they "should" win. For every Steelers game, there's a snafu-laden Raiders game. Since October, I think the Texans have had to give up something, whether it be losing Schaub against the Buccaneers, Danieal Manning against the Titans, and so on, in order to get something of equal value: a win.

Of course it's all superstitious nonsense, but it's the only way I can make sense of the way the Texans played Sunday against the Panthers. For winning against either the Falcons (or Bengals, I'm not entirely sure), the Texans had to give up what was should have been a win after clinching a playoff berth.

With that tenuous connection between anime and football being made, let's get to how the Texans fared in the red zone.

Jump. And bring your tissues with you.

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3,381 days. That's how long we've waited. It's been 3,381 days since the first game in franchise history, a thrilling 19-10 win over Quincy Carter (snicker) and the Arlington Cokeboys, and the day those same Texans clinched their first AFC South championship and entrance into the playoffs.

Put another way, it's been nine years, three months, and three days for Texans fans, and 6,538 days since the last playoff game was held in Houston.

It's been a long drought. Since then, the nation's fourth largest city has been starving, desperate for playoff football to make its return.

Ladies and gentlemen, as of roughly 3 p.m. Central Time (1 p.m. Pacific) yesterday, the drought is over.

The Texans will host a football game in January, and possibly more. If you had told me that after the end of the first half in today's game, however, I would've called you a liar.

This was, make no mistake, an ugly game for the good guys. Stupid turnovers, frequent boneheaded penalties, and a defense that bore a disturbing resemblance to last year's squad made it look like our hopes of clinching the division would have to wait a week. In other years, this would have been a game where we'd be searching for a moral victory, scrambling like lunatics to make a fourth quarter comeback, only to fall short.

This is not other years. This is a game where the offense came out flat, made a lot of costly errors, without our best offensive weapon, without our leading pass rusher, with about 378 players on injured reserve, and a partridge in a pear tree third-string quarterback (whose parents really should have had better seats) at the helm; and they STILL pulled out the win.

I don't know how they'll do once they get into the playoffs, but if this is any indication, we may have a lot of time left in our season, after all. All I know is I will finally get to watch the Texans play in the comfort of my own home, without resorting to an online stream.

Considering how special this game was, and because I can do whatever I want on these posts, we'll be changing up this week's red zone post. How? You'll have to hit the jump to find out; though I suspect a lot of us are still floating after Sunday's game so you might not need to jump at all. But do it anyway.

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From a football perspective, Saturday completely and utterly sucked for me. My Cougars were one win away from their first BCS bowl game. All they had to do was beat a team they were double-digit favorites against. What did they do? Coog fans know. They crapped the bed. They Coog'd it. Meaning that to salvage the weekend in football for me, I needed a Texans win, because I wasn't sure I could live with both the Coogs blowing it and the Texans losing, especially on this particular Sunday.

With T.J. Yates under center and facing a Falcons team that I didn't like our chances against even under the best of circumstances, I didn't know what to expect from the only football team that matters.

And then I watched "Weejay" play. He was poised, he was making all the throws you want to see from your quarterback, and yes, a few you don't. Most of all, he looked like he belonged there. To be honest, I was never entirely sold on Matt Leinart being the solution. I was optimistic, sure, but during the Jaguars game, he just didn't look right out there, kind of like a water buffalo playing the trombone.

Weejay Yates really came through Sunday in ways I would never have expected a fifth-round rookie to do, and against a damn good Falcons team to boot. And now he's got one win and one save to show for it. Will he lead the Texans to the promised land in February? Well, I'm not putting money on it, but weirder things have happened, right?

In the meantime, let's see how our beloved Texans fared in the red zone this week.

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I, like most of you, was curious to see what would happen when Matt Leinart was given a chance to lead the first team offense in glorious combat.  I wanted to believe that he could lead us to the promised land, mostly because I don't know how to tie a noose.  I thought he could do it, even going up to the point where he injured his collarbone...again. 

I don't know how exactly, but losing Leinart for the season actually bothers me worse than losing Schaub, and I like Matt Schaub.  Actually, I take that back, I know why it hurts more.  With Leinart, we kind of knew what we could expect.  We had a sample, small as it may have been, of what Leinart was capable of.  Now we have a rookie (T.J. Yates), a scrub (Kellen Clemens), and a yet-to-be-determined third quarterback (Kubiak??) that the Texans will have to rely on to get to their first playoff berth in franchise history.

It's scary.  Anyone who saw today's game knows that's a scary prospect.  But all is not lost, gentle reader. 

In relief of Leinart just before the half, Yates actually played pretty well, in my opinion.  He'll have time to take snaps with the first team, which he hasn't had the opportunity to do yet.  Clemens, though a scrub, does have experience as a starting quarterback.  And, lest we forget, we still have one of the top-rated defenses and running games in the league to back them up, and we still play the Colts and Traitors.

Did I mention the 8-3 record?  Because we have that.

Keep hope alive, and don't reach for the bleach!

Now on to the red zone, jump here to read it...or stagger if you're still in no condition to jump.

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As you have probably surmised by the title of this post, the Texans are in a good place right now.  They have the best record in franchise history after the first ten games.  That same record, 7-3 if you weren't already aware, means that if the playoffs were to start now, the road to the Super Bowl would go through Reliant Stadium.

I don't know about you, but I still can't fully wrap my head around that.  That's not even taking into consideration the complete transformation of the defense by Wade Phillips, who may or may not be a witch, and that most of those wins came without our best players on offense and defense.

I love watching this team play; not just the offense, but the entire team.  I can't think of many times in the course of the Texans' nine previous years of existence where I could make that statement without being accused of sarcasm.

I especially love watching this team in the red zone, which we happen to have some stats on. 

If you want to see how the Texans fared in the red zone, and judging by the score, you probably do, hit the jump...like now.

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Ho hum, another game, another notch in the win column for the Texans.  It's starting to feel a bit old hat to see the Texans come out of a game with the victory these last few weeks.

Oh, who am I kidding?  This winning stuff never gets old, especially if you think back to this time last year (vs. the Chargers).   Our secondary was burned regularly by the likes of Seyi Ajirotutu.  The Texans had to mount enormous fourth quarter comebacks to make up for, to put it kindly, lackadaisical offensive play in the first half each week. 

Think about that game.

Now think back to this one.

Now back to that game.

Now back to this one.

Against the Browns, the Texans dominated on both sides of the ball in all four quarters of the game (except that one garbage-time TD to Joshua Cribbs, which we'll chalk up to aliens or something).

Hell, even Bill Cowher (and I feel dirty quoting him) called the Texans "the most complete team in football."  Frankly, I'm still not sure I believe that he really said that.

It feels damn good to be a Texans fan this year.

Oh, and we have red zone stuff.  So jump and let's continue to revel in this week's win.

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I'll be honest, I expected the Texans to win this one handily.  You would think that ten years of Texans fandom would teach me to never expect anything from the Texans to be a given, especially wins.  But damned fool that I am, I did expect the win.  Chalk it up to having playoff expectations (again) for my favorite team.

But early on, I should have guessed that it wouldn't be as easy as all that.  The day was filled with ominous portents:  the Texans opened the roof, Jacoby Jones caught passes early, and Kubiak punted the ball from the Jaguars' 37-yard line.

This "easy" win proved to also be an ugly one.  But a win is a win is a win, the Texans remain undefeated in the division, and they're 5-3.  That's a pretty good day, I'd say.

And they had a pretty good day in the red zone this week, which if you've forgotten, was kind of the point of this post.  So let's fire up the wayback machine and look back on the day that was.  Just be careful with the machine; it's a rental.

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