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It wasn't all that long ago, August to be exact, that a lot of people were predicting big things for the Houston Texans. Now, they're sitting at 2-11, and the front office just fired head coach Gary Kubiak following a second loss this season to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Another one of those 11 losses came at the hands of the St. Louis Rams.
Week 6. The Rams were coming off their second win of the season, against the Jaguars. It was also the second game featuring the Rams current run-first offensive philosophy, after burning Brian Schottenheimer's attempt at running some kind of deformed spread offense over the first four weeks of the season. And it worked.
The week before this game, Houston benched a struggling Matt Schaub in a lop-sided loss to the 49ers. But Kubiak went back to his veteran quarterback against the Rams and took a heaping helping of criticism from the media and upset fans.
St. Louis intercepted Schaub twice in the third quarter, including rookie linebacker Alec Ogletree's 98-yard interception return for a touchdown that made it 38-6. That was the final straw for Kubiak too; he replaced Schaub with T.J. Yates. In the days after the game, he named Case Keenum the team's starting quarterback.
Houston kept losing. Kubiak got more and more desperate. Turning back to Matt Schaub late in Week 11 which resulted in this. He went back to Schaub on Thursday night, a desperation move that almost paid off until Schaub threw his tenth pick of the season late in the fourth quarter.
And that was it. It feels like Rick Smith should at least send the Rams a thank you card, no?