Four In a Row, Baby!

yesterday was a good day.

thursday night i was surprised by a call from sister epiphenita and st. barbara offering me a ticket to yesterday's match-up between the houston texans and the tennessee titans. and how could i say "no"?

luckily for me...sister e is not a big fan of the football. st. barb is.... and you know where i stand on the whole thing.

barbara and i sat 26 rows up from the field in the endzone....lined up directly behind the right hash.

good seats.

i had the best time with barbara... we drank our beer. chatted with the season-ticket holders around us.... we yelled. we jumped out of our seats. we shared some frightfully inappropriate stories that may have shocked any of the straight people around us.

we checked out the cheerleaders and compared notes. we admired my new favorite, kevin walter, and discussed how mario williams scares me a little bit and that turns me on.

and when it was all said and done...it may not have been the prettiest win.... but we broke our seven game losing streak against the titans. final score: 12-13 houston.

for the first time in texans's franchise history... they have won four in a row.

the texans seem to be turning a corner. they have found ways to win ugly...something that has always escaped them in the past. last week they pulled off the win after four turn-overs in green bay.

and yesterday.... the texans became the first team this season to hold tennessee from scoring a single touchdown.

tennessee.... the team with the best record in the nfl at 12-2.

and how did we play? from the houston chronicle today:

Johnson scored the game’s only touchdown on a 13-yard reception from Matt Schaub. Slaton is the only back to rush for at least 100 yards against the Titans, and he has done it twice. He finished with 100 yards on 24 carries, including 46 on the last drive when the Texans were running out the clock.

we looked impressive enough that peter king of sports illustrated actually put houston in his "fine fifteen" at number 15 with the caveat:

What? The Texans at No. 15 over the Jets and Cards, two division leaders? No question.

mr. king, in his monday morning QB column that i always highly recommend, also listed andre johnson as his offensive player of the week:

Andre Johnson, WR, Houston. At various points this year, I've considered Brandon Marshall or Larry Fitzgerald the best receiver in football. Not the past two or three weeks. In the first 20 minutes of Sunday's game against the best team in the conference, Johnson had five catches for 129 yards and a touchdown. He finished with 11 for 207 and the TD. In the first meeting between the teams, in Nashville, Johnson dropped two touchdown passes, so he made this game his personal shot at vindication. He succeeded and went over 100 catches for the season in the process. Johnson is big, fast, acrobatic and, though he doesn't have the soft hands of Fitzgerald, his hands are plenty good to be a superstar for a long time

king also went on to say:

I think if Steve Slaton (last five games: 156, 73, 130, 120, 100 yards) had been playing this big a role all season, he'd be challenging Adrian Peterson for the rushing title right now.

...

I think the receiving race is going to be a good one down the stretch. Andre Johnson's up on Wes Welker, 103 catches to 102, and Johnson has a 98-yard lead on Roddy White for the yardage title. Johnson's amazing. He's averaging a 100-yard receiving game per week. Exactly.

i know this may be confusing to a lot of texans fans.... but this is called praise.

several people are now predicting an above .500 winning season for the texans for the first time in franchise history. next week we play at oakland and should win. then our final game is against chicago at home.

if we can pull these two games off....we'd not only win six straight, but end the season 9-7.

i don't think we're quite a play-off team yet... but we're close. next year, we should honestly be able to hope for our first playoff berth.

fingers crossed.

e.