Closing Week 7

This week has officially come to a close. Everything looked good in the early games on Sunday, it was the late game surprises that brought our scores down this week. The score for the week was 8-5 (me) and 7-6 (Mardi). The current tally is 68-35 (me) and 65-38 (Mardi).

Houston got right down to business on Sunday following the Military Appreciation Day festivities. On San Francisco's opening play from scrimmage Mario Williams was able to get a sack on Shaun Hill. This helped to set the tone for the first half in which Houston limited San Francisco to 50 yards of total offense, the fewest ever allowed by a Houston Texans team in a half. Marr Shaub led another passing attack, throwing for 2 touchdowns in the first half. Alex Smith was put in the game to replace Shaun Hill to start the second half and got San Francisco on a roll. Smith led a passing attack, throwing for 3 touchdowns to Vernon Davis. San Francisco also made some defensive adjustments and allowed only 3 points in the second half. The defense for Houston made plays when they counted, however, and stopped a last stand drive by San Francisco by intercepting the ball with less than 1 minute to play. San Francisco is a good team this year, and I knew this was going to be a challenge, I just didn't think it would be that exciting in the second half. The run defense for Houston came up big again this week, limiting the rushing attack to 48 yards. Houston now moves to 4-3 and moves into 2nd place in the AFC South behind the undefeated Indianapolis Colts.

Since Mardi was able to watch the Minnesota game and I was unable to even follow it on ESPN Gametrax, I will let her comment on that one.

What a wild finish in Miami. New Orleans was on the verge of being blown out but managed to put together a 2nd straight 40+ point game to come from behind and win. I honestly thought it was going to be Miami getting blown out of this one. Another surprise was the way Cincinnati came out and just manhandled Chicago. The loss of Cincinnati's leading pass rusher should have given Jay Cutler room to work, but apparently the loss to Houston was a wake up call for Cincinnati. They built a huge lead and never looked back. The New York Giants are struggling a little bit as they couldn't seem to mount any consistent attacks against Arizona. Tony Romo and company surprised a lot of people by leading Dallas to a big win against an Atlanta team that sports tough play on both sides of the ball.

Just a quick thought on Monday's game, well, Washington in particular. It was good to see Washington finally score an offensive touchdown, but the playcalling had nothing to do with it. It doesn't matter how good the playcalling is, you still need players to execute the play. Missed assignments, poor route running, and dropped passes are how an offense loses a game for a team. I didn't see anything special in the plays run last night, I just saw better execution on key plays. Washington's management was wrong to publicly humiliate the coach the way they did, but unfortunately the result from last night's game is only going to make their actions look rosy.

Anyway, I'm interested to hear Mardi's thoughts on this week's football action and I'm looking forward to an exciting Week 8.