Baltimore Ravens

Weekend # 2

John Royal's NFL Picks: Week Two

Jason Friedman’s NFL Picks: Week Two

John Royal’s NFL Picks, Week Five: Sports Writers Are Athletes Too…

John Royal’s Pigheaded Pigskin Picks, Week Six: Loving and Hating the Cowboys

Jason Friedman’s NFL Picks, Week Nine: Tony Romo and Britney Spears? Lance Armstrong and Ashley Olsen? Vince Young and David Carr? What’s the Deal with All These Mismatches?

Jason Friedman’s NFL Picks, Week Ten: Openly Defying the Gods Since October 2007

Jason Friedman’s NFL Picks, Week 11: Tough Week, But Take the Texans

John Royal’s NFL Picks, Week 12: Forget the Drumstick, Let’s Wing It

John Royal’s NFL Picks, Week 13: Rushing More Than Ricky Williams

Jason Friedman’s NFL Picks, Week 13: Are There Not 32 Men in This Country Worthy of Being Starting QBs?

Michael Vick Gets 23 Months. Too Bad He Didn’t Kill a Human.

Jason Friedman’s NFL Picks, Week 17: Are the Texans Half Empty or Half Full of It?

Yo. You Live in Houston, Not Tennessee.

NFL Review, Week One: Ahman Green, Cedric Benson, Tom Brady and Rosario Dawson

No Word Yet on Ravens-Texans Game

John Royal's NFL Power Rankings

Houston Texans Remain Positive, and Maybe That’s the Problem

John Royal's NFL Power Rankings

Tuesday Morning Quarterbacking: This One Was All Kubiak

Texans-Ravens: Just Why Exactly Is Houston Favored to Win?

Tuesday Morning Quarterbacking: Well, It Could Be Worse

Jailhouse Mock

Pot calls kettle black! Tonight on KHOU!

Game Time: Texans' Playoff-Rooting Manifesto 2.0

​"So you're saying there's a chance..."  -- Lloyd ChristmasA couple weeks ago, when the Texans were sitting at 5-6, I spent the better part of about four hours constructing an easy-to-follow guide for Texans fans to know whom to root for in games throughout the balance of the season in order ... More >>

Texans Schedule Out, And More Rides On Kubiak Than Ever Before

​The season remains nearly five months away, but with Tuesday night's much-celebrated release of the 2010 NFL schedule, the gameplanning for Peyton Manning among the Texans' brain trust can and should officially begin. Sure, this week's draft is the more pressing matter. Yes, there are still ... More >>

Brian Tuohy's The Fix Is In: Nothing In Sports Is As It Seems

OTOH, maybe the fix isn't in​As hard as it might be to believe, every Super Bowl since 1996 has been fixed. No, not fixed by gamblers or players trying to throw the game. But instead fixed by the NFL. Sure it sounds a bit far-fetched, but that's the allegation made by Brian Tuohy in his book, The ... More >>

Giants 34, Texans 10: Another Tough Defense, Another Breakdown For The Houston Offense

Texans: Let's not get physical​We knew the Texans' young defense could have games like this. A second disastrous performance in five outings for the supposedly-elite Houston offense, however, is incredibly concerning.The numbers are baffling. 195 total yards. 1.6 yards per rush with what had been ... More >>

Good Lord: Are The Texans About To Make A Playoff Run?

Beat the Ravens, and things get interesting quickly​Nothing hurts our head more than calculating NFL playoff scenarios, with the possible exception of getting hit directly on the skull by a 50-pound block of ice. So we will leave those calculations to more-obsessed people, but we do know this ... More >>

Ravens 34, Texans 28: It's Not Remarkable, And It's Not A Near Miss

Gary Kubiak: Change that "H" to an "N"​If the Texans franchise has any hope for the near future, owner Bob McNair had better not frame Monday's stunning overtime loss to Baltimore as more evidence that the team is "close". That was the rationale in 2009, when the Texans finished 9-7, but were ... More >>

NFL & College Football Best Bets -- It's Crime Time

Lennie knows all, eventually​To some of you this may sound obvious, to some it may sound weird, and to some it may sound deplorable -- I wish I had time to watch more television. With the advent of episodic television on cable channels like HBO and Showtime, the ante has been upped and the ne ... More >>

The New Normal

The Texans start operating like a bona fide NFL team.

2011 NFL Preview, Spoken In Wagering-ese

The betting window is open​I hope everyone who has had a chance to check out our Texans 2011 preview "The New Normal" has enjoyed it. Big ups to Monica Fuentes for coming up with the season-long interactive game card tracking Texans' results. You need to go check it out. If you haven't read ... More >>

Texans-Ravens: Five Things to Watch

Photo by Marco TorresThe Texans face a tougher test this week.​"If the Texans are 3-3 after the first six games, then we'll be happy." -- Pretty much every same Texans fan The statement is a classic example of how the ebb and flow of a season can recalibrate expectations. The Texans are set u ... More >>

Worst Sports Night Ever? Texans Lose, Cards & Rangers to the Series

You'll have to put up with Tony LaRussa's mug for awhile.​Our Houston Texans analysis will be coming later, due to some unforeseen circumstances, but in its place let us ponder how the sporting gods have toyed with us. Sure, beating the Ravens in Baltimore would have been a big upset. But the ... More >>

Texans-Ravens: Four Winners, Four Losers

It just feels like home to the Texans' ox.​Sometimes it's good to shake things up a little bit. We sit here every Sunday night for the last three football seasons and it feels like invariably we wind up saying the same thing -- "same ol' Texans." So this week, I took a trip to Chicago, and wa ... More >>

Football! This Weekend's Best Bets

The Flacco Factor: Always keep it in mind​It's the first weekend of football in November. In college football, this means we get into nut-cutting time, weekends that completely weed out the real championship contenders. This weekend includes a quasi-final four in the SEC with the huge LSU- Ala ... More >>

Football! This Weekend's Best Bets: Stanford, Wisconsin & Other Bullies

Not seen at Camp Randall.​Nobody likes a bully. Unless, of course, that bully can win you some money! Through the first ten weeks of the college football season, in my mind, four BCS conference college football teams have set themselves apart as "bullies" of the college football world, meanin ... More >>

NFL Week 17 Viewing Guide -- What in the Blue Hell Each Game Means

"College football has the best regular season of any sport, and the lack of a playoff is one big reason why." -- Bill Hancock, Executive Director, Bowl Cartel Championship Series That's my favorite inane argument against a college football playoff -- that somehow the existence of a playoff cheapens ... More >>

Texans, Pats & Tebow: This Weekend's Best Bets, NFL Edition

God, let these picks come through​Witness the go-to move for a blog contributor who is technically on vacation but still likes to keep his commitment of five posts a week to his freelance employer because he loves them and loves money. Not one, but TWO posts worth of football predictions! To ... More >>

Texans 31, Bengals 10: Andre Johnson's Return Sparks Offensive Revival

Photo by Marco TorresHappy times at Reliant​Andre Johnson was poised to assume the role of feel-good story in any Texan playoff win, regardless of how it came about. Nine seasons of brilliant play that (until now) had been overshadowed by team-wide failures can have that effect. For the first ... More >>

Texans Fans: 5 Reasons to (Try to) Hate Baltimore

On the other hand....​The Houston Texans travel to Baltimore Sunday for the biggest game in franchise history, a game that could take them to the AFC championship. So we need to build up a big hatred of Baltimore, right? Turns out that's not so easy to do. Five reasons to hate Baltimore and ... More >>

Texans-Ravens: Five Keys to Pulling Off the Upset

Photo by Marco TorresAn upset: It could happen.​The lack-of-respect narrative for the T.J. Yates-era Texans may finally be changing. Of the four playoff underdogs this weekend, the Texans ( 7.5) are labeled by oddsmakers as the second-most likely to pull an upset. The only team higher, San Fr ... More >>

How to Appear Knowledgeable at a Texans Gamewatch Sunday (From the Bad Advice Dept.)

Photo by Marco TorresOh, and wear a mask.​You don't have to be a football fan to find yourself at a Houston Texans gamewatch party Sunday when they take on Baltimore. Which can be a problem, because you'll be surrounded by fanatics and you don't want to look foolish. Luckily, you can look li ... More >>

The Dream Is Over: Texans' Stout Defense Can't Overcome Team's Mistakes

There is sadness in Houston​Inspiring defense by the Houston Texans, which included a clutch goal-line stand, couldn't overcome the team's mistakes as they fell 20-13 to the Ravens Sunday. T.J. Yates threw three interceptions on passes that should never have been thrown, and Jacoby Jones disa ... More >>

Ravens 20, Texans 13: Historic Season Ends From Self-Inflicted Wounds

Looking ahead to the fall, finally​In the big picture, the Texans were playing with house money. With little playoff experience and on a third-string rookie quarterback, this shouldn't rank high on the list of Houston football collapses. This wasn't the Oilers in Denver and Buffalo, circa 199 ... More >>

Move Over Stagger Lee, Jacoby Jones Has Something Dumber!

A bigger "oops" than Rick Perry​Last Friday, John Granato and I were breaking down the keys to the Texans' playoff game in Baltimore on our radio show on 1560 The Game. For the Texans to win the game, I thought it would be crucial for them to get a big play in the return game from either Danie ... More >>

Football! AFC and NFC Title Game Best Bets!

You can't spell "elite" without E-L-I. Really, you can't​We interrupt this Texans-grieving for an update on the Alabama tea bagger and my AFC and NFC title game picks! (I'm pretty sure when my parents sent me off to college, they didn't think I'd be typing that sentence in my job.) The main c ... More >>

Texans Offseason Blueprint: Five Moves Needed to Become AFC Favorites

​If Sunday's AFC championship proved anything, it's that the Texans with T.J. Yates were a legitimate threat to reach the Super Bowl. The same Ravens that the Texans so thoroughly dominated in Baltimore one week earlier (save mostly-unforced turnovers) had the title in Lee Evans's grasp and o ... More >>

Patriots Seal AFC Title with a Kiss (w/ AWKWARD Video)

Bal'mer is gonna be tough on Billy Cundiff. Indeed.​The Patriots and the Ravens played a classic AFC championship game yesterday that featured various twists and turns, including a couple of bizarre brain cramps from Pats quarterback Tom Brady, a "turn back the clock" performance by the hefty ... More >>

Houston Texans Grieving Process 3.0: At Least We're Not This 49er Fan

​It's been a couple weeks, but perhaps some of you are still smarting from the Texans' loss to the Ravens ending their two game playoff run. As I expressed from the day after that game, there are lots of ways to cope with a loss, but to me the best way is taking some semblance of pleasure in ... More >>