Houston drop UCF 51-31

The good news is the Cougars rallied and scored 20 unanswered points in the fourth quarter. Houston jumped out to a 10-0 lead, then engaged the UCF Golden Knights in an exchange of body blows. Houston finally landed enough in the fourth to take the lead for good.Jackie Battle rushed for 70 yards and 3 scores and Anthony Alridge added 131 yards on the ground and one score. Kevin Kolb meanwhile added a 22 for 34 effort yielding 304 passing yards and three TDs one each to Vincent Marshall (6 rec/39 yds), Biren Ealy (4 rec/85 yards), and Roshawn Pope (2 rec/76 yeads).

The bad news, Cougars had to rally and score 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter. The Mad Dog D allowed 248 yards of rushing, and 282 yards through the air. Fortunately, the Golden Knights helped the Coogs and gave up two fumbles and two interceptions. They were also penalized 8 times for 70 yards.

Overall, while it was nice to see them fight back but it was a pedestrian effort vs a weak Golden Knights. I'm not fired up about this one. The Coogs will need to get it together on defense if they want to defeat the CUSA West leading 7-1 Tulsa Golden Hurricane.

Yaaaawn

Man, is the World Series on? Did someone win? Wait, who is playing? I'm not even here to talk about the World Series. St. Louis has it in the bag.

Something that bothers me to no end is the announcements of the league MVP. It is game 5 of the World Series with the Cards up 3-1 and we have no idea who the MVP is for 2006. Is it just me or is this ridiculous? No winners of any kind, Cy Young, rookie, or Manager. This is ridiculous. How do you announce season winners after the World Series? It's stupid. I can't understand and baseball needs to correct it. The votes are supposed to be in before season's end so why are the winners left a secret for so long? I don't know. Someone help me out.

S Web's Week 8 NFL Picks

Now we're rollin'. Well my two underdog picks panned out, but my lock didn't. Arizona knew who Chicago was, but couldn't figure out Oakland. Green Bay took care of business in Miami, and the Texans as projected rose to the occasion against the Jags.

Let's see, that puts me at 6-7 for the season, I'm making up for a shaky start. Let's get to it.

Saint Louis (10-106)
I don't see it, I don't see St. Louis getting beaten this week. This one should be a nice shootout.
I'm taking STL and the pts.

Philadelphia (-4-106)
Yeah, Philly has lost two straight on the road, they're back home and s/b nice and angry to get back on the winning track. McNabb is the real deal and Leftwich, while a trooper, can't hobble around forever. I'm taking Philly and giving the points.

Indianapolis (2.5-110)
Indy an UD, just doesn't sound right to me. They're looking to go 7-0 and keep it rolling to the playoffs. Denver has a pedestrian passing attack with Plummer, and have to rely heavily on the running game making them basically one dimensional. I'm taking Indy and the points here.

Let the games begin.

Texans win convincingly...27-7

The Texans revisit the win column against what I consider their best rival in the AFC South. They have always played tough against the Jags. Tough enough that I went homer on them in my Week 7 picks.

It all started on the ground, Houston finally put together a ground attack with Wali Lundy leading the way with 19 rushes for 93 yards. Houston on the afternoon put up a total of 131 yards. It wasn't a pretty 131, they only averaged 3.9/carry, but it was effective.

David Carr provided the arial attack, launching 34 and connecting on 25 of them for 218 yards. One of them, an arcing scud missle attack connected with Andre Johnson between two defenders for a TD. Johnson had 8 catches for 106 yards...how sweet it is.

This is what we've wanted this team to be. A team that moves the chains and makes plays, the Texans rolled up 21 first downs in the game, mainly b/c they didn't have the third down and quarter mile to go. They were only penaized 17 yards during the game. They played a good game, not a great game, but a good one against a Jag team that was supposed to contend for the AFC South title.

Though it was nice to see all of the rookies, Lundy, Mario Williams, DeMeco Ryans, and Owen Daniels, who added a TD, get into the game...I'm handing out the game ball to Wali Lundy in this one...as Coach Kubiak stated in an AP interview:

"I was worried about him after the first couple of weeks that the overload had
slowed him down and he wasn't reacting," Kubiak said of Lundy. "Sometimes you
have to let players sit back and watch a week or two so that they calm down. He
played with great presence today."

We needed a running attack and he brought one.