Houston kept an ace up their sleeve… by keeping some crap in their pants.

Tex Wrecks
Well, well, well. The Houston Texans finally showed some football acumen this Sunday, and all it took was a shitload of Reggie Bush highlights and a freakin' Heisman award on Saturday night to inspire Texans to play perspired football. Leading the Reggie Bush draft drive, Houston was on the verge of (whoops) winning a game! OK, so they weren't going to win, but they had a really good chance of taking it to overtime when Jerome Mathis returned a kickoff into field goal territory with 10 seconds left. Mathis could've gone out of bounds, stopped the clock and given the Texans a field goal chance, but he mysteriously chose to stay in bounds as the clock ticked down to zero.

Dammit, another loss right? No! Alas, a defensive penalty! Another setback…I mean, chance to win this game!

So here comes Kris Brown, a pretty damn good kicker—who'd only missed one field goal between 30 and 39 yards coming into Sunday's game—for a 31-yarder to send this puppy into overtime. No problem right? No, big problem—left. And not just a little left. Like, backwards left. I've seen third trimester abortions kick better than that.

So the Texans may have thrown a game to keep themselves ahead (or behind) everyone else on draft day. Can you blame them? At 1–12 they've been planning their postseason since the preseason and I'm sure their fans would've booed a win. They know how much Reggie Bush, or the Ron Jeremy–sized package they'd get if they traded down would turn this team around. Keep up the good work, Texans. But next week, try not to make it look so obvious.

Steel Certain
Last week I projected the Steelers, who were one game behind the Chiefs and Chargers in the Wild Card hunt, to surpass their competition and squeeze into the playoffs. And they squeezed the crap out of Week 14. With the Chiefs' last-second loss to the Cowboys and the Chargers' loss to the (snicker) Dolphins, at home I might add, the Steelers are already in the playoff driver's seat. So, there you have it. I'm almost possibly kinda right.

Patriot Stacked
Shhhh, don't say anything, but New England's pulling itself together and playing like the Patriots that won a few Lombardi's the last several years. Corey Dillon is back, their defense is gelling and Tom Brady's hair is really gelling. But they're doing it quieter than Helen Keller in a screaming contest. Between the Colts' run at 16 wins, the fight for the last Wild Card spot, and Sage Rosenfels' first and last names, the AFC has forgotten about the defending champs. If everyone keeps overlooking them, they'll have to look over Mick Jagger's lips and Keith Richards' third liver at the Super Bowl halftime show to see them come February.

Norrrv!
Can someone put Norv Turner on suicide watch? I watched his post-game press conference after the Raiders found a way to get shellacked by the Jets and he looked more depressed than Kurt Cobain having a three-way with Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Plath while Elliott Smith watched. His voice was quivering, he looked like a deer in the headlights, and he was even paler than usual (this guy works in California, right?)

But is all this Norv Turner's fault? Sort of. The Raiders were clearly overhyped this season (and I said as much back in Week 4.) They were a team built to outscore their opponents, except they couldn't outscore a 40-Year-Old Virgin. Defensively, they were pathetic, but offensively they suffered from a lackluster O-line, a hammy-hampered Randy Moss who, when healthy, just runs down the field and puts up his hands, and fans that spend more time on their mascara than on their ability to understand football. If anything positive can be taken from this season, it's that Raider Nation has one more year to get their Rouge and Lip Pencil degree at Avon's Cosmetic and Manicure College. Makeup!