Category: External Sports (Page 352 of 821)
Texans fans are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.
According to the Houston Chronicle and ESPN.com, fans who believe coach Gary Kubiak should be fired are organizing a rally for Sunday’s game to make their point.
Fans Brad White and Scott Carter are hoping the demonstration before Sunday’s season finale against the Jacksonville Jaguars will help convince team owner Bob McNair to change coaches, according to the report.
“I want to stress that I don’t want people to come out to bash Kubiak,” White told the Chronicle. “We don’t want vulgar signs out there. We’re not there to bash him. We’re there to say that we want a change.”
“Five years has been enough,” White said of Kubiak’s coaching tenure in Houston, according to the report. “We’ve regressed this year. Minus a couple players, we believe the players aren’t responding to [the coaching staff] anymore.”
I don’t disagree that Kubiak should be fired – his record (36-43) through five seasons speaks for itself. Many people believe that this team has had enough talent to at least make one playoff appearance in the past few years but it just hasn’t happened.
That said, the Texans had issues coming into the season that people wanted to look past because of their explosive offense. Everyone knew the secondary was highly inexperienced as a whole and would need time to gel. So it shouldn’t be surprising that opposing teams were able to shred Houston through the air on a weekly basis.
Everyone got excited when the Texans started 4-2, as well they should have. That win against the Colts in Week 1 was impressive and they showed some grit on the road in Week 2 against the Redskins.
But when a team has issues, they eventually come to the surface and that’s what happened in Houston. It didn’t help that Andre Johnson was banged up for most of the year, or that Owen Daniels was still recovering from knee surgery, or that Matt Schaub showed an inability to finish games strong. The wheels came off and unfortunately for Kubiak, he’ll be the one that has to pay for that.
But just because the Texans make a coaching change doesn’t mean that all of their problems will vanish. This isn’t a team that’s one missing piece away, which has to be disheartening to fans.
The Seattle Seahawks’ season comes down to Sunday’s game against the Rams. Beat St. Louis at home and win the worst division in football. Lose and watch the Rams get destroyed by the Saints or Falcons next weekend.
The choice is yours, Seahawks.
With Matt Hasselbeck dealing with a hip injury, coach Pete Carroll told the media on Monday that the Hawks are planning to start backup Charlie Whitehurst. Hasselbeck won’t practice and would be a game-time decision, so it makes sense for Carroll just to get Whitehurst ready and to start him. (If Hasselbeck is deemed healthy enough to play, he can still suit up and be Whitehurst’s backup.)
Given how poorly Hasselbeck has played of late, the Seahawks may benefit from playing Whitehurst, even though the former Chargers’ signal caller hasn’t been very productive himself this season. He’s completed just 55% of his passes (35-of-63) on the year for 315 yards and one touchdown. He’s also thrown three interceptions and despite giving the Seahawks a shot of life off the bench against the Falcons two weeks ago, he was horrendous in his only start versus the Giants earlier in the season.
The good news is that Whitehurst is more mobile than Hasselbeck and therefore can buy himself extra time by moving around in the pocket. The bad news is that he isn’t accurate and can kill drives with the best of ‘em. He’ll face the 20th ranked pass defense in the NFL on Sunday, but any secondary can look good when the opposing quarterback only completes 55% of his passes. But at least he’ll be at home.
Whether or not the Seahawks win on Sunday, at least Carroll will have the opportunity to evaluate his quarterback position. If Whitehurst is a disaster again, the Hawks may need to draft a quarterback next year or retain Hasselbeck for at least another season. If he plays well on Sunday and again next week in the playoffs (assuming Seattle beats the Rams), then maybe Carroll will feel comfortable turning the offense over to Whitehurst in 2011.
This will be a huge week for Whitehurst.
LeBron is in some fairly hot water (…again…) after he spoke without thinking (…again). Here’s what he said about the idea of a less watered-down NBA.
“Hopefully the league can figure out one way where it can go back to the ’80s where you had three or four All-Stars, three or four superstars, three or four Hall of Famers on the same team,” James said. “The league was great. It wasn’t as watered down as it is [now].”
“[Contraction] is not my job; I’m a player but that is why it, the league, was so great,” James said.
“Imagine if you could take Kevin Love off Minnesota and add him to another team and you shrink the [league]. Looking at some of the teams that aren’t that great, you take Brook Lopez or you take Devin Harris off these teams that aren’t that good right now and you add him to a team that could be really good. Not saying let’s take New Jersey and let’s take Minnesota out of the league. But hey, you guys are not stupid, I’m not stupid, it would be great for the league.”
Anyone who knows the definition of ‘contraction’ knows that’s what LeBron is talking about here. Some people believe that it would be good for the NBA if there weren’t so many teams because there would be more stars on each team and the quality of play would go up. The downside with this strategy is teams (like Minnesota and New Jersey in LeBron’s example) would no longer exist.
So LeBron is in favor of contraction. Wait — no he’s not:
“That’s crazy, because I had no idea what the word ‘contraction’ meant before I saw it on the Internet,” James said after the Miami Heat’s practice Monday. “I never even mentioned that. That word never even came out of my mouth. I was just saying how the league was back in the ’80s and how it could be good again. I never said, ‘Let’s take some of the teams out.’ ”
“I’m with the players, and the players know that,” James said Monday. “I’ve been with the players. It’s not about getting guys out of the league or knocking teams out. I didn’t mean to upset nobody. I didn’t tell Avery Johnson to leave either. I didn’t say let’s abandon the Nets, and not let them move to Brooklyn or let’s tear down the Target Center in Minnesota. I never said that.”
Welcome to Semantics 101, with Professor LeBron. No, he didn’t say that we should be “knocking teams out,” but he did say how great it would be if the league weren’t so watered down, which would absolutely require fewer teams. He didn’t say the T-Wolves shouldn’t exist, but he did say it would be great if Minnesota’s star player were arbitrarily moved to another team. What happens to the T-Wolves in his world?
Just because he didn’t say the word contraction doesn’t mean that he didn’t come out in favor of contraction.
I like the Sportress of Blogitude‘s take on this:
Aha! That is sound, logical reasoning right there. How can LeBron be in favor of something if he has never even heard of the word until he saw it on the internet? Allow me to illustrate: let’s say – simply for the sake of argument only – that some misguided pundit argued that killing some of the babies born into the world every day would be an effective means of population control. Obviously, such a deplorable opinion would generate a lot of controversy. But if someone later asked said pundit how they possibly could be in favor of infanticide, that person could potentially argue that if they have never heard of the word “infanticide” before, how could they be in favor of it? Unless a person can identify the exact word which perfectly describes some particular act, they cannot in any way support said act, even if that person previously stated they were in favor of exactly what that particular word means. It’s all about semantics, you see.
Well played, LeBron. Well played. Your keen mastery of logic mystifies us all.
That about sums it up.
Following the NFL’s decision to move the Vikings-Eagles game from Sunday night to Tuesday because of bad weather in the Philadelphia area, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (D) said that we’ve become a nation of wusses.
From ESPN.com:
“It goes against everything that football is all about,” Rendell said Monday on radio station 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia.
“My biggest beef is that this is part of what’s happened in this country,” Rendell said. “I think we’ve become wussies.”
“We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell added. “If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”
Trick question, because China doesn’t have football. So take that, Governor.
While I agree the game should have never been rescheduled, Rendell is going a tad overboard here. The game wasn’t moved because the league doesn’t want its players playing in snow. It was moved because there was some concern for the fans either driving or leaving the game in a blizzard.
The NFL made a quick decision regarding fans’ safety and therefore the game was shifted to Tuesday. I don’t think we need to turn this into a political discussion about how the Chinese are so much far advanced than we are based on this. (After all, there are better examples of that fact – zing!)
I’ve lived in the Midwest my entire life. I’ve seen snow, I’ve driven in blizzards and I’ve had to deal with some horrendous weather. I do agree that many people freak out for no reason as soon as bad weather hits. But maybe shifting the game to Tuesday will cause fewer incidents and hopefully avoid accidents. I get that accidents happen in all weather, but maybe the NFL avoided an unnecessary risk by playing the game tonight.
Are we a nation of wusses because of that? I don’t think so.
FOLLOW US!
CATEGORIES
© 2026 The Scores Report – The National Sports Blog
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑